KABUL - The elections support project of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP/ELECT) is coordinating international support for this year’s Afghanistan elections on 20 August.

Margie Cook is the Chief Electoral Advisor with UNDP. Tilak Pokharel and Jamil Danish of UNAMA spoke with her about UNDP’s support to the presidential and provincial council elections.

Ms Cook said there are cost and security challenges in this election, adding that the increasing level of interest among the electorate about the election should be kept alive so that there is good turnout on polling day.

What challenges are you facing this time as compared to the last elections in Afghanistan?
Well, I wasn’t here in the last elections. But I did do the evaluation for the United Nations in 2006 of what happened in 2003, 2004 and 2005. One of the big challenges then was that there was a political agenda set by the Bonn Agreement for conducting the elections within a certain period of time. And that timeframe didn’t allow for capacity development and institution-building under broader development aspects to have a proper attention to be paid to them.

At the end of the process, the political and electoral process worked very effectively and produced a good result. There was not much in the way of capacity building. That’s one of our challenges now because unfortunately, between the end of last elections and the middle of 2008 when the voter registration project started, there had been almost no investment in Afghanistan in governance, in electoral support, in civic education or any of the related activities, which means that when we started in June 2008 we were in exactly the same position of having no groundwork put in place. So, we have had to both broad-mobilise resources, plan for very complicated activities and implement them, all at the same time. That would be the big challenges.

Other challenges are contextual and environmental. Things like costs have gone up very much since the last election for things like transport and fuel and so on. And also, by all accounts, the security situation is very different one from that experience in 2005. In 2005, people could get around much more easily and we are more constrained now. And that costs a lot of money in terms of purchasing armoured vehicles, the provision of security equipment and also for the payment of protection for personnel and locations. So, there are a lot of cost challenges as well as security challenges.

Finally, the other challenge, but it’s a positive challenge in many senses: the last elections were run by the international community and unfortunately not lot of capacity building was done during that period. These elections are Afghan elections that are being run by Afghan institutions, by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) of Afghanistan, by the MOI (Ministry of Interior) and the ANP (Afghan National Police) with the support of the international security forces. We are here to provide advice and support; we are here to do a lot of work alongside Afghan colleagues. But, it’s a challenge for them too because they haven’t done this before and outside of conducting a war, conducting an election is probably the biggest logistic exercise the country has to undertake. So, we are asking an institution with very little experience to do a very complicated and very expensive exercise and to take ownership and leadership of it. But our Afghan colleagues and institutions, particularly the IEC, have taken that responsibility very seriously.

How have you been conducting the voter education campaign ahead of the elections?
Voter education is a variety of things, not just one activity. The IEC has a very comprehensive voter education programme that consists of a range of activities from flipcharts for community-based educators working in small villages in the field through to small grants programmes which provide for activities to be conducted such as a football game which might attract a crowd which can be used as an excuse for education. Voter education includes things like production of billboards of a lot of public service announcements on radio and television, a lot of advertising, the production of short films and documentaries on how the voting process works.

But the voter education is not just the responsibility of the IEC. There are many stakeholders in the electoral process, like the civil society groups. Everybody has a role. If you look at our website, for instance, you can see just how much civic and voter education is going on. You can click on a province, you can find out province-by-province or nationally. What organisations are involved in voter education? Who is funding them? How much is its costing and what sort of activities they are undertaking with what sort of themes – whether they are focusing on women or young people or disadvantaged people or disabled people.

The challenges include the fact that you have to do civic education in a number of languages. Because of the history of Afghanistan, there is very high level of illiteracy. So the materials that are produced and the modalities of communication also have to take into account the levels of education and understanding. So mobile theatre is a popular form of civic education and in our training with the police, which is part of civic education but a different stakeholder group, we have to make sure that the information for the police is also able to be understood even by those 80 per cent of the police force that are not literate.

Are you convinced the people in the rural areas are being reached out to in terms of voter education?
The IEC has nearly 2,000 civic educators working throughout the country, using a lot of materials that have been produced and conducting locally-based activities. And on top of that, there is quite a lot of civic education going on with the Afghan civil society forms and other Afghan institutions through IFES (International Foundation for Electoral Systems), which is one of the partner organisations, and through ourselves and through other support.

There is never enough civic education and it is never done for long enough. In every election environment, the criticisms are – didn’t start early enough and it wasn’t enough. There will be criticisms in this election and that will be valid criticisms. We could if we had had the resources and started a year earlier, there could have been a lot more. It’s always a lesson learnt and unfortunately, the lessons never seem to be learnt.

So, whilst there is quite a lot going on, it’s probably there is always more that can be done.

In the previous election, there was a problem of people possessing multiple voter registration cards. What mechanism is in place now to prevent multiple voting?
We can’t prevent people holding multiple cards, because the voter registration exercise was not a fresh voter registration exercise. It was an update of the previous register. So, it appealed to people who weren’t registered previously, people who turned 18, people who’ve moved back to Afghanistan or even people who had old cards who wanted to get new cards and submit their old cards. There is no way of knowing how many people hold more than one card. And we know that there have been some multiple registrations and the IEC’s data analysis systems are making every effort to try and eliminate duplications but that’s not a full-proof system.

So, what has to be put in place is some mechanisms to prevent people voting more than once. The most important mechanism is the use of indelible ink so that a person can only vote once. When a person votes, their finger is painted with indelible ink. This has been thoroughly tested both internationally as well as tested in Kabul University. Other tests have been conducted to make sure it remains in the finger. It remains in the finger for about three weeks, in fact. That’s the primary check. There are also some other checks that can be put in place as well, but the indelible ink is the most important.

This election will not be perfect. Afghanistan is still in a very difficult environment. The infrastructure is still quite poor. But, a lot of effort is being put in place to make it credible and acceptable and legitimate and transparent so that the outcome will be an acceptable outcome and that’s the most important thing.

Can you describe some of the major areas where the UN has a role in the elections?
Under the Security Council Resolution 1806 that was passed in February 2008, the Security Council gave to the United Nations, through UNAMA and the role of the SRSG, responsibility for the coordination of international assistance to the elections. So, the United Nations as a family of agencies has a very important responsibility to coordinate the support to the electoral process. What we are doing here at UNDP is implementing the technical assistance to the electoral commission. And, that’s a very big project that supports the IEC in areas including planning, security, training, logistics, planning and procedures, field operations, information technology, the data centre, the operations centre, transport, communications, relations building, payment of temporary staff, assistance with the development of databases for payroll system and so on. We have both personnel at the IEC on a permanent basis working very closely with their counterparts with IEC and also in the field at the provincial and regional levels with security, logistics and administration and other provincial electoral advisors.

The UNDP/ELECT programme is the biggest avenue of support from the international community to this process. However, there is a quite a deal of bilateral direct support going on as well and I know that there are a number of donors giving a lot of support to civil society organisations, to the Human Rights Commission and others who have a contribution to make. The US Government’s support to IFES is also contributing to support to the electoral process and in particular to civic education, and the Asia Foundation with the support of the Australian Government is doing a lot of work in the South. Canada is doing additional work in Kandahar province where they have a particular interest and I think DFID is doing extra work in Helmand with the British having an interest.

So, we are not exclusively supporting the election but we have the primary role and the responsibility for coordination.

How critical is the observation of this election both by national and international observers?
It’s very important in any election that there be an independent voice that measures the legitimacy and credibility of the processes. That’s why, much effort is put in place to encourage international observers and the European Union has an observer mission, quite a large one, which is being supported by the OSCE and other actors. And, FEFA, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan will be mobilising something like 8,000 domestic observers across the provinces to observe the elections. This is a very important process. It’s important also that the data that is gathered is gathered in a measurable way, that it’s accurate, that it’s not anecdotal, that there is evidence to back it up, and that the analysis is thorough and careful so that it is a reliable and true picture of what went on. But, it’s a process that must be supported and it must take place.

You said the cost has gone up this time as compared to previous elections. Are you concerned about the overrunning costs for this election or you have adequate funding for this?
We have adequate funding. In fact, when the voter registration period started, the international community responded very quickly to fully fund the voter registration exercise and we are also fully funded for the budget that is being prepared for this election. There are new and emerging needs and there is a team of support led by Ambassador Tim Carney, who is also helping to provide some additional resources for new and emerging needs that we don’t expect to see an overspend and overrun. We have to be very conscious that the United Nations is a steward of other people’s money. And, we have to deal with that in a very responsible and transparent way. So, we provide comprehensive financial and narrative reporting every month to all the donors on all the expenditures and commitments. We are being very careful with that.

What are the major UNDP-supported election projects, like the Call Centre, that are making real impact?
The whole (election) process is supported by the United Nations. The Call Centre is an interesting one and in fact the SRSG (Kai Eide) went to visit the Call Centre the other day and he was very happily surprised by both the number of very well-trained people in the Call Centre and the number of calls that are coming in, and the proportion of calls coming in from the young people who are the first-time voters. That’s a creative way of doing things.

We are also using the SMS technology. There have been some security threat to the service-providers and that’s quite unsettling. And we have to continue the discussion with the service-providers to see whether or not in fact that process can continue to encourage people to come out and vote. But at the moment, there are some security concerns attached to that.

There are some very creative and beautiful printing materials that have been produced. There are some very good radio and television that are now starting to pick up. As you drive around Kabul, you can see that there is a lot of interest in the election by the number of posters that are going up and attention being paid and some thoughtful discussions being paid on media with presidential candidates being interviewed on television and so on.

So the level of interest is increasing and one of the challenges is to continue that level of interest so that there is a good turnout because a good turnout is important for the legitimacy of the process. But we also have to hope and work towards a very peaceful election day that is not disrupted by attacks or disincentives if people have come out and participate.

One of the very good news stories from the voter registration process was that in fact it happened in all but 10 districts of the country. Those 10 districts represent less than two per cent of the all of the registered voters. There are efforts being made through mobile registration teams to try and mop up additional registrations in those areas and other provinces over the next month. The security issues remain of a serious concern but so far all signs are that the process is happening on time and without interference. And we just pray that that continues to be the case.

FEFA has said its election observers can reach out to only about 70 per cent of the polling stations. How do you assess situation in other 30 per cent?
You would find that in no country in the world where observation takes place in 100 per cent of the polling stations. Sometimes people have expectations of what can happen in Afghanistan that are far higher than what happens in their own countries. And that’s quite unfair. That FEFA can mobilise 70 per cent of the country or 80 per cent of the country is a magnificent achievement.

There are also party candidates and agents who will be present at the polling stations and who will observe what’s going on. And they will observe the counting of the votes. And they will have an opportunity if they disagree to seek a resolution from the IEC on the spot. If there are serious systemic problems or complaints, the Electoral Complaints Commission exists to which people can make complaints also. So, there are other opportunities for ensuring that if people have questions or doubt, those questions or doubts can be addressed.

Is there a benchmark to decide whether the election is credible or not?
Well, I use the word “acceptable”. The elections have to be acceptable to the people of Afghanistan. The outcome has to be seen to be one that is performed as effectively and as efficiently as possible with the least interference, as peacefully as possible, and there is no dispute over the result. We are seeing friends in neighbouring Iran at the moment, challenging the outcome of the result there. What we want is a result that is clean, clear and acceptable.

By Tilak Pokharel and Jamil Danish, UNAMA

Website: UNDP/ELECT

Website: Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan

Website: International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)-Afghanistan