KABUL - With just two days before Afghans head to the polls to elect a new President and Provincial Council members, the country’s top security officials said today that “foolproof security arrangements” have been put in place and there is “complete coordination” among the country’s security branches.

“We hope that the people will come out of their homes in maximum numbers on election day and cast their votes with full confidence,” said the Minister of Interior Affairs, Mohammad Omar Daudzai, in a joint news conference with the head of the country’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), in the capital, Kabul.

Mr. Daudzai said that the police force has been directed to remain fully impartial throughout the electoral process. The police, he added, have also been instructed to help prevent any fraudulent activity in the elections.

“Police have been strictly directed to prevent fraud – if they see fraud taking place and cannot stop it, they should call the complaint centre of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the Ministry of Interior Affairs,” said Mr. Daudzai.

More than 400,000 police, army and NDS staff members are being deployed throughout the country to secure Saturday’s elections, the Minister added, while also expressing the hope that elections will be fraud-free, with the cooperation of the people of Afghanistan and the commitment of the Afghan security forces.

He asked Afghans to respond to “the enemies of Afghanistan” through their votes.

“Democracy is the best response to terrorism,” said Mr. Daudzai. “We will show to the world that Afghanistan has a civilized society and their (international) investments, in generous love and treasure, during the last 13 years, have not gone in vain.”

The Interior Minister said that elections would be conducted in 90 per cent of the polling centres in the country, noting that this was much better than in the 2009 elections, when some 2,000 polling centres out of 6,000 such remained closed.

The United Nations has expressed its confidence in the ability of Afghan security forces to ensure the security of the elections, which will mark the first-ever transfer of power from one elected president to another in the country’s history.

According to a statement released today by his spokesperson in New York, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is encouraged by the technical and security preparations and broad public engagement for the elections.

“These are extremely important elections for the country,” said Mr. Ban, urging all Afghan men and women to participate in the vote and “to take this opportunity to have their say on the future direction of their country.”

In his comments in today’s news conference, NDS’s Director, Rehmatullah Nabil, also assured the people of Afghanistan that security arrangements were firmly in place for the polls, and urged the public to participate.

“We have to prove to the enemies, through our votes, that their efforts to derail democracy will not make any difference,” said Mr. Nabil.

Both Mr. Daudzai and Mr. Nabil also assured the public that their staff would remain “fully impartial” in the voting process.

In response to a question about the role of international forces in the election security, Mr. Daudzai said that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) assisted Afghan forces in the transportation of sensitive materials in some parts of the country, but election security was “a completely Afghan-led exercise.”

Also today, in a separate news conference, an Afghan election observer group, the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA), said that his organization was “extremely concerned” about the security of elections.

The TEFA Director, Mohammad Naeem Ayubzada, added that over 7,000 election observers from his organization alone have fanned out across the country to oversee the polls process. Unofficial estimates put the number of domestic election observers up to 20,000.

In the same news conference, a leading Afghan media rights group, NAI-Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan, urged media outlets not to give coverage to any security incident on election day until the voting had ended.