Abdullah not behind preliminary result delay

KABUL (Pajhwok): A report that claims presidential candidate Dr. Abdullah Abdullah was behind the delay in announcing primary result of the presidential election is false.

The presidential election was held on September 28 and primary result of the poll was scheduled for October 19, but it was delayed for a week due to some technical problems in the process, according to the Independent Election Commission (IEC).

Inaccurate information:

A private television channel, on Saturday night quoted a source as saying, “Dr. Abdullah Abdullah stopped announcement of primary election result, Ashraf Ghani was the winner of the election based on this result. The IEC wanted to announce the result that contained fraudulent votes but Abdullah’s team prevented it and asked for removal of non-biometric devices.”

This report, posted on Facebook, got 2,300 likes, 289 comments and shared 179 times.

But some relevant sources say that the information published by a private television channel is false.

Correct information:

Zabihullah Sadat, IEC spokesman, told Pajhwok Afghan News the report that Abdullah prevented announcement of primary election result was not correct.

He said the IEC was an independent organ and it valued only the success of the election process, not winning candidates. The commission was not able to announce the primary result on time due to some technical problems, he explained.

“The clearance process that takes two or three days and some other technical problems need to be solved before the primary result is declared,” Sadat said.

IEC chief Hawa Alam Nuristani on Saturday evening told a press conference that they did not announce the result in order to ensure more transparency in the election and resolve technical problems the process encountered.

Another factor behind the delay acting beyond authority by some election observers, she said, asking observers and political parties to keep their activities in line with their responsibilities and not create problems for the IEC in preparing the election result.

She said a total of 25,566 result forms had so far been entered into the tally center but 1,329 of the forms had some problems and needed to be reviewed while 482 forms were yet to reach the commission.

She added 23,176 digital forms had been entered into the central server system and being checked.

The IEC had dedicated 34,958 biometric devices for the Election Day and 34,767 of these devices were returned while 23,176 of them contained voter information, she said.

Nuristani, however, said that 2,888 other biometric devices were either broken or failed to start but all suspicious ballot boxes, fake photos and other irregularties were being reviewed by observers.

She added that information in the failed devices would be also transferred to the database.

Fraidon Khwazoon, spokesman for Abdullah, rejected the report as baseless and said the IEC was doing its work independently and no one should interfere in its activities.

He said if their team criticized the IEC, they would do it according to the law as they believed the result had been delayed for more transparency.

“Our team respects IEC decisions but it would have been better if the result was announced on its schedule,” he added.

The result of fact checking:

Pajhwok Afghan News critically evaluates speculative posts on social media about presidential runners, explains their factual health and place them in different categories – true, not-so-true, half-true, little true and untrue.

Pajhwok’s findings show that the report published by a private television channel about prevention of primary election result announcement by Abdullah is false and baseless.

Ahmad Sohaib Hasrat

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