Afghan election commission formally announces second round of presidential polls

Head of IEC says second round will be held on June 14 between Dr Abdullah Abdullah and Dr Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.

ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan’s election commission Thursday formally announced it would hold a presidential runoff as no candidate secured the required 50 plus one percent vote in last month’s landmark presidential polls.

Dr Ahmed Nuristani, head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), said the second round of elections will be held on June 14 between Dr Abdullah Abdullah and Dr Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.

Announcing the final results at a press conference in Kabul, Nuristani said Dr Abdullah bagged 45 percent votes while his close rival Dr Ahmadzai got 31.6 percent votes.

The press conference was aired live by Afghanistan’s state television.

The IEC chief asked people to widely participate in the second round, urging the government to remain neutral.

“We will try our best to have a very good second round of elections,” Nuristani said.

When asked about the delay in the second round, the head of the IEC said that the commission cannot hold the runoff in two weeks as there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

Alleged rigging

Replying to a question about the alleged rigging in the April 5 polls, he promised to remove the officials responsible from their post. He confirmed that around 3000 officials including election staffers across the country were identified for committing the fraud.

Officials had earlier confirmed to have received nearly 3000 complaints. Nuristani said that most of the complaints were invested by the country’s Elections Complaint Commission. A total of 100 complaints were also registered after the announcement of preliminary results.