Herati Uproar Over Voting Cards

Thousands of Herat province residents eligible to vote in next month’s parliamentary elections have been denied voting cards, putting the validity of the ballot in doubt, according to some candidates and locals in several provincial districts.

Voting card distribution for the September 18 poll began on June 11 and ended on August 12, but candidates claim the authorities were wrong to set up just two voting card distribution centres to cover such a large province.

Khan Gul Mohammadi, a local candidate for the lower house of parliament, says he now regrets putting himself forward for the election because, he claims, it will not be transparent.

He alleges that 6,000 eligible locals from his district of Farsi couldn’t get a voting card because of the absence of a local distribution centre.

“The Independent Election Commission has taken away the rights of so many people – casting doubt over the work of the commission and showing the elections to be fraudulent,” he said.

Dr Mohammad Naseem Saha, another candidate for the lower house, is also critical of the work of the commission, claiming that only ten per cent of his 40 supporters managed to get voting cards.

He insists that 400 eligible voters from the Zenda Jan district had come to him to complain that they too had not been able to register.

Haji Abdullah, 75, a resident of Zenda Jan, said he had gone to great lengths to get a voting card, but to no avail, “It took me two days to travel from my district to a [distribution centre] to get a card. Then I had to wait long hours in long queues under the hot sun, but I didn’t manage to get one and eventually gave up.”

Shafiullah, 20, who has just returned to Afghanistan from Iran, said the first thing he did when he got back was to try to register for the ballot because he was so keen to vote for his favourite candidate.

“I tried to get a voting card for three days and each day I failed and finally I had to get back home without a card. The elections have lost their meaning for me as I can’t vote for anyone,” he said.

He said the voting card distribution process should be extended and more centres set up across the province, pointing out that there are so many Afghans returning from Iran and there was still plenty of time to register for the election.

But the Independent Election Commission, IEC, denies that eligible voters are being denied the opportunity to cast a ballot.

Awalruhaman Roadwal, head of Independent Election Commission in Herat, says that over the past two months 34,000 voting cards have been distributed to locals, including refugees, and even people who’ve lost their cards have had them replaced.

“I can candidly say that everyone who is entitled to it has received a voting card and those who say otherwise are in fact reluctant to take part in the election,” he said.

“Three months is not a limited time for the distribution process and all those who wanted to participate in the ballot could have gotten their cards if they really wanted.

“Opening voting cards distribution centres in all the districts of Herat province would be extremely difficult if not impossible.”

He said that if this had been done in Herat, it would have had to have been done in districts across the whole country, which would have been hard to achieve.

Fazel Ahmad Manawi, head of the IEC in Kabul, told Radio Liberty that the commission had distributed a total of 17,5 million voting cards nationally.

“In fact, we were not planning any voting card distribution for these elections as enough cards were distributed last year. We resumed this process just to make sure that no-ne was deprived of their rights to vote,” he said.

Obaid Elahi, a journalist and a political analyst in Herat province, believes the IEC has distributed sufficient numbers of cards, and warned that extending the process and giving more out could lead to fraud.

He also cast doubt over the integrity of some of the local candidates who he suspects might encourage their supporters to get more than one voting card.

Indeed, some of the candidates are already concerned that a number of their richer rivals might try to bribe locals to vote for them. Nazeer Ahmad Reha claims there have been cases of them hiring buses and other means of transport to ferry people to the voting card distribution centres.

Reha claims that the wealthier candidates are big threat to the validity of the ballot because they are not popular but use their money to get people to vote.

Shahpoor Saber is an IWPR-trained journalist in Herat.