After completing the review of complaints submitted in Kabul, only one day into the hearing process, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) suggested on Sunday that there could likely be further alterations to the list of eligible candidates.
"There could be some changes to the preliminary list of Presidential and Provincial Council candidates," said ECC spokesman Nadir Mohseni. "There could be some change and that's natural," he said.
The ECC began reviewing the 474 complaints that were filed against the candidates for next spring's elections on Saturday. Although challenges from the 16 Presidential and nearly 400 Provincial Council contenders that were disqualified by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) last Tuesday are also awaiting review, ECC officials indicated complaints against candidates who made the IEC's preliminary list would be prioritized.
The three-day delay in the announcement of the preliminary list last week put the ECC behind schedule. Members of the Complaints Commission said a day after the list was released that the IEC's delay would "affect the ECC's work," likely setting in motion a chain reaction of scheduling setbacks.
One of the other reasons the ECC's complaint review process was expected to take longer than expected was because hundreds of complaints that were registered in IEC satellite offices in provinces across the country had still not been transferred into the headquarters in Kabul when assessments began on Saturday.
Nevertheless, on Sunday Mohseni assured that he and his coworkers would work tirelessly so that the final list of candidates for next spring would be finalized according to the schedule, implying the November 16 release date could still be within reach.
The ECC is not the only body that will be involved in the complaints review process. According to procedure, any complaints related to human rights violations are to be forwarded on to judicial bodies for investigation.