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After, continual objections raised by some candidates for the Nangarhar provincial council regarding suspected defrauding of the poll results, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) decided to recount the votes of Nangarhar province for the Provincial Council. The recount process commenced in the presence of the candidates’ agents, ECC representatives and FEFA observers at the Nangarhar Provincial Electoral office on 05 Nov 2009 and ended on 14 Nov 2009. FEFA having three of its observers on the ground; observed the entire process and hereby, presents the following short report.
Procedure for Recount of the Votes:
The FEFA observation shows that the IEC had not provided any written or specific procedure in relation to the recount process, thus, it had not provided awareness to the candidates’ agents and observer organizations on the manner the recount would took place. The IEC officials merely gathered the observers and candidates’ agents on the onset of the beginning of the recount activity on the venue and explained verbally the recount procedure as: In the first phase, each of the ballot boxes in the 9 previously-assigned stations will be opened, and then all the bundles inside the box will be evaluated and the bundles wrapping the most votes will be picked out from the boxes, consequently, as a sample, three votes from each bundle (one from each side of the bundle and one from the middle) will be picked and will be evaluated and if it is found that a vote is cancelled, blank or has any other deficiency, the sample bundles will be recounted one by one. After the explanation of the procedure which was presented verbally, most of the candidates objected that the procedure could not persuade them at all, and finally, after long discussions of nearly five hours, the candidates accepted the procedure; providing that, if any of the bundles were doubtful to them, they will demand the whole bundle to be counted.
The deficiencies of the procedure emerged noticeably on the very first day; because, the aspects which were not predicted in the procedure emerged and caused more and more complaints from the candidates.
Because, it was observed that some of the boxes had no result forms; while in some other boxes, the results or votes of one candidate was counted for another candidate. The code belonged to one district but the votes from another. While, some boxes were observed that lacked side seals and were exposed to defalcation. The emergence of the unpredicted deficiencies in the procedure once again caused the objection of the candidates on the recount process, and thus the process was stopped. And after long hours of arguments and discussions between the IEC officials and the candidates, the process was once again resumed.
Observation findings of FEFA during the recount of the Ballots:
During the observation of the 145 boxes that were inspected and recounted, the observers of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) noticed that 115 of the boxes did not have any result forms.
After finding the ballot boxes in such condition, all the ballot papers in the mentioned 115 ballot boxes were recounted and a new result form was created for them. But amid repetitive requests by the candidates for a copy of the new result form of the mentioned boxes, it was not provided to them by the Commission employees. The candidates were claiming that they should have a proof in hand, which shall help them, in case any fraud takes place in the results after the recount of the ballots. But the Election Commission employees refused to give them a copy of the result form, so that they could match their copy with the results announced by the Commission and make sure that their ballots have not been subject to fraud after the recount.
During the observation, it was also noticed that, 4 ballot boxes were missing, which included 2 boxes from Bati Kot District, 1 from Kama District and 1 from Dara e Noor district. The fate of these boxes was unclear until the end of the ballot recount and the Commission was unable to take a clear decision in this regard.
It was also noticed during the observation that the side seals of some of the boxes were missing which made it possible for the boxes to be tampered with.
The votes in one of the boxes were not counted at all, and its results were not sent to Kabul.
It was observed in two of the boxes from Khogiani district, where 75 invalid ballots were registered in the results from.
There was explicit difference in the votes for some of the candidates in 6 boxes from Dor Baba, Achin, Khogiani, Rodat, Dara e Noor and Kama districts. For example; Amir Mohammad, a provincial council candidate had received 26 votes in one of the boxes in Dara e Noor district, but there were only 8 votes mentioned in the result form.
There were also 7 boxes from Khogiani, kot, Mohmandara and hesarak districts, where the votes of some of the candidates were mentioned more on the result form than they existed in the ballot boxes. For example, in one of the boxes in Khogiani district, Ibrar Ahmad, a provincial council candidate had 1 vote in the box but it was registered as 107 votes in his favor on the result sheet. It was also observed that in one box 20 votes of one of the provincial council candidate (Najibullah Mahboob) were counted in favor of another candidate (Haji Hassan).
It was also observed during the inspection that the code number of two of the boxes did not match to the actual codes for this province. For example, one of the boxes with code number 1005031 belonging to Rodat District didn’t match code numbers for Rodat district. Another Ballot box with code number 1070012 did not match code number for any district within the Nangarhar province. |
