Attempts to resume the audit of Afghanistan’s presidential election stalled on Saturday as former Afghan foreign minister and candidate Abdullah Abdullah disagreed over the criteria to address alleged fraud in the June runoff.
Abdullah and his rival, former Afghan minister of finance Ashraf Ghani, agreed to the inspection of all 8.1 million ballots cast in the June 14 poll in a deal brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry, but the recount has since faced several suspensions as the candidates sparred over how to disqualify ballots.
The audit had been expected to resume on Saturday after the UN and the country’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) said both candidates had agreed to a UN-backed proposal that included criteria for invalidating fraudulent ballots.
However, Abdullah’s observers did not show up at the IEC in Kabul, with his spokesman saying they were still negotiating with the UN.
“The IEC has adopted the UN proposal, but we still have our observations,” Abdullah’s spokesman Mujib Rahman Rahimi said. “What happens today is not a boycott, it is not an attempt to disrupt the process, the issue is on how to maximize the criteria for invalidation.”
The UN expected the audit to restart yesterday after the IEC agreed to another 24-hour delay.
“The audit process will resume tomorrow [Sunday] and God willing we are not thinking of any more delay,” IEC Chairman Ahmad Yusuf Nuristani said, adding that the postponement was to allow Abdullah to finalize the audit agreement with the UN.
Preliminary results from the June 14 runoff showed Ghani well ahead of Abdullah, with the latter claiming that “industrial-scale” fraud had denied him victory.
The impasse over the vote to succeed Afghan President Hamid Karzai had raised fears of a return to ethnic violence. In a bid to pull the country back from the brink of crisis, Kerry flew to Kabul early last month and persuaded the two opponents to agree to the audit.
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