Afghanistan receives over 8,000 foreign tourists in two years
More than 8,000 foreign tourists visited Afghanistan over the past two years, local media TOLOnews reported Saturday, citing a government official.
Afghan citizens have expressed their outrage over the repeated delay in the announcement of the final results of the presidential election which was held on September 28, 2019.
At a gathering here on Friday, the citizens said that the election stalemate has left a significant impact on the country’s political and security situation, reports TOLO News.
“If the Election Commission does not announce the results, then we will not have any option except to go to the door of the election commission and raise our voice,” said one participant.
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Another Kabul resident said: “We call on the electoral complaints commission to investigate the election process and share the results with the election commission as soon as possible.”
On December 22, 2019, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced the preliminary results of the elections.
Based on the preliminary results, President Ashraf Ghani had earned 923,868 votes (50.64 per cent), while Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah followed with 720,990 votes (39.52 per cent).
But Abdullah refused to accept the results and ordered a recount alleging fraud.
In response, the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) started the process of auditing and registering electoral complaints and registered 16,400 complaints and promised to investigate and verify them in a transparent way.
On January 5, the IECC decided to send a small percentage of the 300,000 disputed votes for a special audit.
But on Thursday, the decision was met with backlash by a number of campaign teams.
The IEC has said that it is fully prepared to cooperate with the IECC regarding the issue of special audits of the votes, TOLO News reported.
“The analysis and verification committee has wrapped up its preliminary work and the secretariat is fully prepared to act upon the IECC’s decisions-across the country–for the verification and recounting of votes,” said Mirza Mohammad Haqparast, a spokesman for the IEC.
However, many political parties and election observers have said that neither the IECC nor the IEC has the ability to undertake the management and leadership of the election process.
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