The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) said that the 48-hour filing period for challenges regarding decisions to disqualify candidates from running in the spring elections ended on Thursday night. The ECC is set to begin the hearing process in which challenges will be assessed and judged on Saturday, affording candidates who were judged ineligible the chance to get back in the race.
Objections to the dramatic cuts announced by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Tuesday, which saw 16 out of 26 Presidential candidates and nearly 400 out of 3,000 Provincial Council contenders disqualified, were a major theme over the course of that past week. Angered candidates and election activist groups alike were up-in-arms about the IEC's decisions and the process by which they were made.
The uproar seemed to indicate that ECC would have its hands full when it came to the hearing process for challenges. And ECC officials had said on Wednesday that the IEC's three-day delay in announcing the preliminary list of candidates would likely affect their work and result in a chain of further delays.
According to Nadir Mohseni, the spokesman of the ECC, the hearing period for challenges would last twenty days. He added that the process would be conducted transparently and under the supervision of Afghan and foreign observers from a host of organizations.
"According to the law, national and international observers along with civil society institutions, media and representatives of political parties are allowed to monitor the hearing process," said Mohseni.
His comments came after officials from the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) criticized the IEC for conducting the vetting process that yielded Tuesday's controversial list behind closed doors, without any third-party observers.
On Friday, IEC officials also announced that the window for Presidential candidates to step down and dedicate their votes to another candidate would close on November 11.
"Based on the timetable, the candidates may quit the presidential race until November 11," said IEC Secretariat Chief Zia-Ul-Haq Amarkhail. "If they withdraw from the election process after that date, their names will remain on the list and their votes will not be counted toward votes of the candidate in favor of whom they resigned."
In previous elections, problems have arisen around candidates making deals with each other up to just days before the vote where some have their names listed on the ballot but then simply order all votes for them to be transferred to the total counted for another candidate. The new deadline months ahead of the election is intended to avoid such tactics this time around.
The ECC also announced that it has received a total of 474 complaints against candidates who made the preliminary list on Tuesday. Eighteen complaints were filed against Presidential candidates.
The final list of candidates is scheduled to be announced by the IEC on November 16.