Slow work by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) in its vote auditing process has raised concerns of both campaign teams. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and Abdullah Abdullah have criticized commission and said they hope the process speeds up in the coming days.
“We hope that in the upcoming days, the IEC will be able to audit 1,000 boxes as they had said,” Abdullah’s technical team leader Fazel Ahmad Manawi said.
“During the past two to three days, the process was slower, which is not too concerning, but it would be good if the process is expedited,” said Daud Sultanzoy, Ghani’s technical team head.
In addition its own delays, however, the IEC has still not received an audit methodology approved by both of the candidates. Mr. Manawi has said that if the methodology is not approved, the entire audit will be meaningless.
“The agreement on cancellation of votes should have been finalized once and then the audit should have started, but based on pressure from the UN, the audit started, promising the bill would be confirmed. If this document is not finalized, what is done so far will be useless,” warned Manawi.
Meanwhile, Sultanzoy tried to explain why the methodology bill is taking so long to pass, indicating there remain some issues with it from the perspective of the Ghani camp.
“The approval of the bill took longer because the UN added a few articles to ensure transparency and a few demands of Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, which would result in the invalidation of people's votes, which we should not do,” Sultanzoy said. "I would say that there are still two more issues that needs to be agreed on, which will be resolved soon.”
The IEC has remained steadfast in maintaining that the auditing methodology will only be approved once both candidates have agreed on it. The commission has acknowledged that the auditing process continues to proceed without the approved methodology, and has faced delays on account of observers.
“The process has moved slowly, and any process that starts in the IEC, starts slow, so that all the observers are able to follow,” IEC spokesman Noor Muhammad Noor said.
The audit results will feed directly into the final result that the IEC will announce, which will lead to the next president taking office. However, before then, the commission will have to re-examine over eight million votes, all while under the microscope.