All investigations into fraud have been completed and the results from this year's provincial council elections will be released next week, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) announced Friday.
“Our investigations have ended today and we will send the final result of our work to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Wednesday of next week," ECC Secretary Mohammad Ali Setigh said.
The announcement comes after a number of provincial candidates appealed to President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai to solve the issues troubling the provincial council election process.
The voting for the provincial council elections took place on April 5, along with the first round of the presidential election. But the process of vetting votes for fraud and tallying the results was put on hold during the presidential process, which in the end dragged on much longer than expected.
Since the IEC announced President Ghani as the successor to Hamid Karzai, however, the time and space has opened up for election officials to sort out the outcomes of the provincial contests.
“We want President Ghani to put pressure on the election organizations to announce the result and end the long wait of the candidates and the people,” said Layeq Naseri, a provincial council candidate.
Another provincial council candidate, Abdul Khaliq Zazai, told TOLOnews that he and others have been pleading with election officials for some time, but to no avail. “We have asked many times for the election organizations to announce the result, but they said we will announce today or tomorrow and then nothing happens," he said. "We hope that they announce the result of the election next week.”
The provincial council elections will bring into office a new class of leaders for all 34 provinces. Although they will have a certain level of autonomy and local focus in their position, they will ultimately report to the new administration in Kabul, headed by President Ghani and the Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.
