Nadir Mohseni, the spokesman of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), said on Wednesday that next week its process for the assessment of complaints filed against Presidential and Provincial Council candidates would be open to the media.
The ECC began gathering materials for its complaints review process on Saturday, but still hasn’t received all the complaints registered in provinces outside Kabul. Although on Tuesday the Complaints Commission said they had gotten the complaints from 18 of the provinces, others remained stuck in satellite offices outside of the capital.
Reportedly, security issues were behind the delay in complaint document transfers.
Mohseni also announced on Wednesday that the number of complaints registered to the ECC had increased. He said 642 complaints, up from the previous 474, had been documented. Of those, 27 are related to Presidential candidates, he said.
The ECC spokesman suggested that based on the complaints gathered so far there would likely be changes to the preliminary list of candidates that was announced by the IEC last Tuesday.
The preliminary list of candidates saw 16 Presidential and nearly 400 Provincial Council contenders eliminated. The drastic cuts were not well-received by those who didn't make the list and speculations about mistakes in the Independent Election Commission's vetting process and potential political bias have abounded ever since.
Many of the speculations suggesting a flaw in the IEC’s evaluations were based on the lack of transparency about the process, which is why the announcement of the ECC on Wednesday stating that the media would be welcomed to observe their review of complaints will be welcomed news.
However, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) was still frustrated they had been denied access to the early stages of the ECC’s review process.
“They don’t allow us to monitor the preliminary evaluations of the Electoral Complaints Commission,” said Mohammad Fahim Naeemi, the spokesman of FEFA. “In think has a bad impact on the election and transparency of the process.”
A number of MPs on Wednesday also voiced concerns about the IEC and ECC’s processes and indicated that Parliament would be keeping a close eye on them.
The April 5 elections are considered crucial in determining Afghanistan’s future at the daunting juncture presented by both the departure of President Hamid Karzai from office and coalition forces from the country after over ten years in the driver’s seat. And the legitimacy of the elections and their outcome, or at least the perception of it, is regarded to be the crux of their success.