Hekmatyar says election commissioners dismissed ‘illegally’

KABUL (HIA) leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on Thursday said the conflict in Afghanistan continued because of the foreign forces’ presence and the lack of an impartial government.

The HIA chief also called as illegal the dismissal of election commissions’ members without any investigations.

Talking to a press conference here, the presidential hopeful said foreign forces should leave Afghanistan under a rational timetable and a government which was acceptable to all Afghans should be established.

Hekmatyar said the government dismissed election commissioners before identifying those involved in fraud and failures, calling it unfair.

He added the government should have appointed an independent team for investigation into allegations against the commissions and then should have made a decision.

“If the commissioners have committed crimes, then those who are complicit in their crimes should also be tried,” said Hekmatyar, adding those who had appointed the election commissioners were also complicit in the first place.

The HIA leader called the October Wolesi Jirga elections as ‘fraudulent’ and voiced on all the parties concerned to work for transparency in the next presidential election.

“I urge all Afghans to come forward and choose a legal way, shun negative competitions and not think of reaching power with foreign arms,” he said.

Hekmatyar said some candidates were using government resources for their campaigns, a practice he said should be stopped. He regretted creating new provinces had become part of electioneering.

He said such campaigns created problems as residents of areas such as Muqor district of Ghazni province staged rallies to demand their district be promoted to a province.

About the July presidential election, he advised the Afghans not to vote for “a traitor, corrupt, looter and failed figures” and “those who sold the country.”

He said the current electoral system should be changed for the next parliamentary elections because the system was unsuccessful. “The electoral system should be changed in a way that every electoral district has one representative and in which refugees are given the right to vote and no votes are lost.”

The HIA leader said the new Wolesi Jirga or lower house of the Parliament would represent only ‘eight percent’ of the people because only around one million people had voted in the elections.

Hekmatyar said he supported every effort for peace in Afghanistan but convening a consultative Loya Jirga would not solve problems. “We support any type of efforts for peace and ask all the warring sides not to create problems for peace and stop emphasis on war,” he added.

He asked the Taliban to agree to a long-ceasefire and intra-Afghan peace dialogue so it would help in establishing a government which was acceptable to all the Afghans and rescue the country.

mds/ma

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