The Second Vice President Mohammad Sarwar Danish at a gathering of university students in Kabul called for the announcement of the preliminary results of the presidential elections “as soon as possible.” According to Danish, this should have been announced over a month ago. 

“It is more than two months that both the commissions and the people’s votes have been taken hostage,” Danish said. “We call on the Independent Election Commission now that the vote recount has been completed in all 34 provinces, it should not allow the people’s fate to be played anymore and it should announce the preliminary results as soon as possible and everyone should respect the commission’s decision."

He said that anyone who has complaints should refer to the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission as it is a legitimate source for this purpose.   

The Independent Election Commission on Thursday said that it has completed the verification process and invalidation of fraudulent votes in the 34 provinces of the country. 

This comes as the Stability and Convergence election campaign team, led by presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, has threatened to reject the announcement of election results by the IEC unless it recounts the votes in 27 provinces that the commission had already completed without the presence of Abdullah’s observers. 

Pointing out the peace efforts, Danish said the Taliban showed over the last year that they do not really believe in peace as they have continued violence against the people of Afghanistan. 

He said peace should be Afghan-led and a ceasefire should be announced; otherwise, peace will not be established in the country. 

According to Danish, the achievements of the past 18 years should be maintained and they should be considered in any peace plan. 

Danish read out some official figures about the country’s education system and said he sees a tremendous improvement in this area compared to the past. 

According to Danish:

•    48% of Afghanistan’s population is below 15 years of age. 

•    Afghanistan has 9.6 million schoolchildren – 39% of them are female 

•    There are 18,000 schools countrywide 

•    6,000 school buildings are under construction in 34 provinces 

•    70,000 literacy training programs were held over the last four years.

•    There 38 government-owned universities and 131 private universities nationwide.

•    186,000 students (27% female) are enrolled in government-owned universities 

•    Private higher education instructions enroll 164,000 students countrywide.

•    Totally, there are over 350,000 students in higher education.

•    Last year, 38,000 students were graduated from govt universities.