Presidential candidate Gulbuddin Hekmatyar at a news conference on Tuesday said that those involved in electoral fraud should be brought to court. He insisted that out of 2.5 million votes, 1.2 million are fraudulent and have been cast in favor of a certain campaign team.

Hekmatyar had a list of demands:

•    All non-biometric votes should be invalidated, and 1.2 million votes are fraudulent, non-biometric and fake.”

•    The 300,000 disputed votes should be taken out of the vote recount process.

•    The election should be held again in areas where biometric devices were “stolen” during polling day.

•    Those who are involved in electoral fraud should be held accountable.

“We approve the vote recount process with the condition that it covers all ballot boxes – not a few thousand of them,” Hekmatyar says, adding “the vote recount needs less than one week because there are less than 1.5 million votes.”

During his speech, Hekmatyar repeatedly blamed the State Builder campaign team led by President Ghani for committing “80%” of fraud in the election.

“There will be dire consequences for those who have committed fraud if the (election) commission does not pay attention to our demands...We will defend our rights,” Hekmatyar said.

He said the German firm, Demalog, which provided almost 29,000 biometric devices to the election commission, “failed” to fulfill its obligations.

“We want to bring Dermalog to court, and we want a refund of the money (paid for purchasing biometric devices for Afghan elections),” Hekmatyar said, adding that the German company was supposed to announce the election results “within hours after polling day,” but it failed.

On Peace Process

Rather than the Taliban, Hekmatyar said, there are “other hands” disrupting the peace process whenever it reaches a “sensitive” phase.

Pointing at security incidents that have hindered peace talks, Hekmatyar said the Taliban is an easy target that can be blamed for anything that happens.

He said his party will not attend the China meeting with a delegation if most of its members are “in favor of war.”

He suggested that a group be formed to make final decisions on peace-related issues.