Officials from the Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Friday said they are nearly finished with the data entry of votes from seven provinces out of 34 and that the commission will likely announce the preliminary results of the election on Sunday.
Meanwhile, some election campaigns have said that those campaigns that are guilty of committing “fraud” in the elections should be referred to the legal and judicial institutions of the country by the election commission.
The seven provinces are Panjshir, Badakhshan, Baghlan, Sar-e-Pul, Faryab, Jawzjan and Takhar.
The IEC is currently processing votes of Badakhshan, Baghlan and Faryab provinces.
Commissioner Aurangzeb, a member of the IEC, said: “Result sheets from these three provinces have arrived in the election commission, we are trying to complete the scan and data entry process so that we are able to submit the general report about the seven provinces to the commission tomorrow.”
“If the fraudulent votes are not verified and public satisfaction not achieved, of course any result which will be announced will not be acceptable for us,” said Mohammad Natiqi, a member of Stability and Convergence campaign.
“We demand of the election commission that those election campaigns and presidential candidates who have committed electoral crimes must be dropped from the list of candidates and be referred to the legal bodies,” said Arif Kayani, spokesman for Presidential candidate Rahmatullah Nabil.
The Second Vice President Mohammad Sarwar Danish at a gathering of university students in Kabul on Friday 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."
This comes a day after the Solidarity and Convergence team led by presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah announced that it will not accept the election results unless the IEC undertakes to recount votes in the 27 provinces that it had already completed without the presence of Abdullah’s observers.