Team of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, which initiated a vote recount after the first round of the election, said on Saturday it boycotted the process due alleged procedural failures by the Independent Election Commission (IEC).
KABUL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th November, 2019) Team of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, which initiated a vote recount after the first round of the election, said on Saturday it boycotted the process due alleged procedural failures by the Independent Election Commission (IEC).The recount was initiated after Abdullah's claims that about 300,000 votes cast in the September 28 election were invalid, according to Afghan news outlets. Dermalog, a German biometrics company that supplied devices for the Afghan election, subsequently reported to the IEC that out of those disputed votes, 137,000 were recognized valid.
Abdullah's team wrote in a statement that it had urged its observers across the country to suspend their participation in vote recount.
However, the IEC said it was conducting recount according to procedure, no matter who opposes it.
"We do our work according to our procedures. The election commission has begun the process of counting and inspecting more than 8,000 polling stations, and those opposing it can not prevent us from doing our work," the head of the IEC Secretariat, Habibur Rahman Nang,. told reporters.
The recount is conducted via a unified system in all provinces, which can be easily separate good and fraudulent votes, he said, promising that results will be announced soon.
The results were initially planned to be announced on October 19. However, the announcement has been postponed due to technical difficulties, particularly, damage to vote database.
