Dr Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai (L) and close rival Dr Abdullah Abdullah (R). PHOTO: AFP/FILE
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.
COMMENTS (2)
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@Roshan:
Too bad, they did not consult you! Dr Ghani will be the likely winner since those who voted for the third did not want the man with two names was not acceptable. This is the standard procedure for the election of the President to be voted for more than 50 percent of the vote count..
Rex Minor
Somehow, i am not for this system of repeat elections. During the first election itself the highest vote winning candidate should be declared winner even if he wins by 1 vote. Thats democracy. Using all the resources once again for holding the election and campaign expenditure is an unnecessary burden on the state. There is a gap of 13% between the votes polled by both the candidates and ideally Dr. Ghani should refrain from a recontest and let Dr. Abdullah take charge of Afghanistan like he did last time to let Hamid Karzai continue. Hopefully, Afghans would rectify this unnecessary re election system in future like Bangladesh had an unnecessary system of letting a care taker govt. take charge during the election process.