Govt amending electoral law to engineer polls: TEFA

KABUL (TEFA) has accused the government of trying to engineer elections in its favor by amending the electoral law.

Two days earlier, a number of presidential election candidates and leaders of political parties held a consultative meeting about the electoral law’s amendment at the Presidential Palace.

Haroon Chakhansori, spokesman to the president, on Saturday told Pajhwok that the draft amendment to the electoral law was finalized and the law would be amended by a technical team after consultations with all sides.

He had said up to 20 consultative meetings had been held on changes to the election law and two points had been agreed upon so far which included amending the electoral law and bringing reforms to the election commissions.

TEFA head Mohammad Nayem Ayubzada told a press conference in Kabul that the election commissions, political parties and the government were trying to politicize electoral reforms and allow the governmental plan of amending the electoral law.

He said three unproductive consultative meetings about the amendment to the electoral law had taken place and those gatherings were mostly symbolic.

The amendment would give more power to the president and it would be imposed on others, he said.

Ayubzada said no one listened to TEFA about its suggestions in the meetings and the foundation would avoid further meetings on the matter.

A legal framework should have been made for amending the law but the government politically treated the issue, he added.

He said the government and some candidates wanted to amend the law in a way to favor a specific team.

Considering the current situation, he believed, holding next presidential elections and amending the electoral law seemed impossible, he said.

Sughra Saadat, TEFA spokesman, said the government had removed the selection committee by amending the electoral law.

TEFA suggested that members of the election commissions should be graduated from political science and Sharia and law and secretaries of the commissions should be elected with votes of other members as well as responsibilities of secretaries should be explained in the electoral law, she said.

She said their suggestions included biometrics based voting, authorizing election commissions to appoint permanent and contract based employees.

Their other suggestions were keeping women’s seats in village and district councils and accepting final decisions of the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC).

mds/ma