Afghan election body says 90 per cent of polling centres will open

30 Mar 2014

Afghan election body says 90 per cent of polling centres will open

KABUL - The body responsible for organizing Afghanistan's Presidential and Provincial Council elections this coming week announced today that polling will be conducted in 90 per cent of some 7,500 polling centres, with the remaining centres staying closed due to security concerns and access issues.

“Polling in 90 per cent of the centres is a great achievement and relatively better than elections in 2009 and 2010,” said the head of the Secretariat of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), Ziaul Haq Amarkhil, at a news conference in the capital, Kabul.

The number of polling centres opened in the last Presidential and Provincial Council elections in 2009 was not provided at the news conference.

Mr. Amarkhil said that the election body has already dispatched election materials to a total of 6,775 polling centres that will open for the 5 April vote, and that the staff to man the centres has already been recruited. A total of 748 polling centres will not be open.

“These polling centres have been closed down due to security threats, inaccessibility for election observers and voters, and mining on the routes,” said Mr. Amarkhil, adding that the closed polling stations are spread across the country.

The IEC announcement comes a day after its Kabul headquarters was attacked by insurgents. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) condemned the attack, while stressing that electoral institutions and their civilian staff “should not be the targets of deliberate attacks.”

In a news release on Thursday, UNAMA noted that, despite real security challenges, progress was being made by the country's security forces in creating conditions for citizens to exercise their right to vote.

"The Afghan security forces have demonstrated their increased capabilities in the extensive preparations undertaken to give those Afghans who wish to vote the opportunity to do so,” said the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, in the news release.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA, Ján Kubiš, told a meeting of the Security Council earlier this month that technical preparations for the Afghan-managed and Afghan-led electoral process remain on track and “of a better quality” than previous election cycles, including in the areas of fraud prevention and mitigation.

UNAMA is providing technical support to the Afghan authorities, at their request, in the organization of the elections, which UN officials have described as critical to Afghanistan’s future stability and continued international support.

At today’s news conference, Mr. Amarkhil said that yesterday’s attack on the IEC headquarters was foiled successfully by the Afghan security forces, which showed “the commitment of the security forces towards ensuring full security before, during and after the elections.”

An Afghan official involved in security for this week’s polls, General Mohammad Salim Ahsas, assured the people of Afghanistan that “foolproof security arrangements” have been put in place for election day and “Afghan voters can come out of their homes and cast their votes without fear.”

Mr. Amarkhil noted that the poll observation was another important element to ensure the credibility of the results of the elections and their broad acceptance. He said accreditations have been issued to some 200,000 election observers, and related promotional and public awareness programmes have been implemented throughout the country successfully.

The IEC official also urged all Afghans to participate in the elections and the poll candidates to extend their full cooperation with the IEC in preventing fraud.