KABUL (Pajhwok): A number experts and election watchdogs have acknowledged that low turnout would not affect legitimacy of presidential polls on Saturday.
Earlier, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced that the voting would start at 7am and end at 3pm, but the period was extended until 5pm.
At least 13 candidates are contesting the election, seen as a two-horse race between President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah.
According to Independent Election Commission (IEC) information, about 9.5 million people had been registered themselves as voters and most of them participate in presidential election.
But election monitors and analysis believed that besides security, cultural issues some other factors triggered to hamper people’s participation in presidential ballot.
In this report we first discuss the number of people participate in election in other countries and their turnout.
In 2018 in Pakistan, around 106 million people had been registered themselves as voters and of this number 51.6 percent voters participate in election.
In Indian during ongoing election, about 900 million people registered as voters but 67.7 percent voters take part in polls.
Bangladesh has 164 million population, of them 50 percent eligible to vote but in 2018 election 80 percent voters participated in election.
Italy has 60.5 million populations and 73 percent of the citizens had registered as votes but 65.28 percent people cast their votes.
In recent elections in Belgium 87.2 percent, Sweden 82.6 percent, France 67.9 percent, Canada 62.1 percent, Swiss 38.6 percent people cast votes.
However, the number of voters have not yet ascertained in presidential election in Afghanistan today (Saturday) but this turnout evaluated in this report.
Low turnout:
Yousuf Rashidi, executive head of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) their finding showed that there was a low turnout in polls. Specially women showed less interest in casting their votes.
He said back in 2014, more people participated in elections and this time the turnout was very low.
Issues of insecurity, separation of provincial council election from presidential polls and damage to biometric devices caused the low turnout in polls, he added.
“There is no law suggesting the minimum percentage of voters for the legitimacy of elections. If at least one million people have casted their vote there is no problem,” he said when asked about the legitimate number for credible elections.
Naeem Ayubzada, head of the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) said that despite tight security arrangement and no security incident the turnout was low.
“Good preparation were made but people did not participated. The matter of legitimacy could be raised but this time we cannot say why more people did not take part in polls.”
Reasons of low turnout:
Political Affairs Expert Entezar Khadem pointed out five main reasons behind low turnout in elections.
He said people have lost their trust on election process looking to the past elections because their votes were not valued.
He added candidates did not have good programmes to encourage people to vote for them.
The third reason he said was technical and logistic. Election related materials did not reached polling stations in time and in some places biometric devices did not worked properly.
Khadem added the Taliban’s threats and cultural issues also caused low turnout in polls.
He, however, said despite all challenges and problems according to him 40 percent of the registered voters would have exercised their right to vote in today elections.
Nasratullah Haqpal, another political affairs expert, said lack of trust on election body and massive rigging that took place in past election caused low turnout in elections.
“Last time people fully participated in polls but a unity government was formed through the mediation of Americans and that really harmed public trust therefore people did not take part in polls this time.”
IEC Head Hawa Alam Nuristani during a press conference said that a good number of people participated in elections.
“Due to the face that more people showed interest in voting the commission extended the voting process for another two hours,” she said.
IEC Secretary Habiburrahman Nang said the commission cannot say anything about turnout until the votes are counted.
It is worth mentioning, that Afghanistan laws don’t talk about the legitimacy of elections on the bases of turnout percentage.
Sa/nh
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