The Independent Election Commission, or IEC, on Monday reported that no progress has been made on the announcement of the preliminary results. Apparently, the IEC is still waiting for a report by the secretariat of the commission on the recounted votes from 27 out of 34 provinces. 

The IEC secretariat was expected to send the report by Sunday evening, but other members of the commission said they had so far not seen the report, which includes a technical explanation of how the partial vote recount was carried out.

In seven provinces, supporters of various election campaign teams have prevented the recounting process.

The head of the IEC secretariat, Habib-Ur-Rahman Nang, said the vote recount in 27 provinces was completed on Saturday, Nov. 30 , but the IEC chairperson said last week that it was completed on Thursday, Nov. 28.

“Today we are working on a technical report and we are trying to complete it soon and send it to the commissioners,” Nang said.

Electoral observers said the election commissioners are holding back information from the people and the media about the process.

“We are concerned about further delays in this process because it will worsen the situation,” said Yusuf Rasheed, a member of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan.

“A report can have a legal base only when it is fully transparent, but we do not know what the commission has done so far or what it will do,” election observer Nasir Nasiri said.

This follows a Friday protest in Kabul organized by presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s campaign team to demand transparency in the vote recount process. The protesters warned the commission to not announce the preliminary results before invalidating the 300,000 disputed votes currently tallied in the IEC’s total number.