By DPA,
Kabul : The head of Afghanistan’s election commission said Thursday that all preparations for parliamentary elections scheduled for Sep 18 were on track and there was no reason to delay the polls.
The surge in Taliban attacks and deteriorating security mainly in southern and eastern regions have prompted many Afghans and Western officials to call for the postponement of the polls.
“We made all the preparations for the parliamentary elections according to our timetable,” Independent Election Commission (IEC)chairman Fazal Ahmad Manawi said at a press conference. “We have reached a point where return will be impossible.”
Manawi said he had received assurances from the Afghan and NATO forces that they would provide security for some 6,000 out of 6,835 polling stations throughout the country.
A total of 2,556 candidates, including 406 women, have registered and been approved by the IEC to compete for 249 seats in the Lower House of Parliament, he said.
The elections would be the second parliamentary polls since the ouster of the regime in late 2001.
Presidential elections in August 2009 were marred by bloody militant attacks, and insurgents are expected to launch similar assaults this year.
NATO’s senior civilian representative, Mark Sedwill, told reporters during a visit to Brussels Wednesday that security measures are “well developed: we’re way, way ahead of where we were last year”.
NATO and Afghan forces are “just trying to ensure … that there isn’t an unintended consequence from the security situation that particular groups will be disenfranchised”, Sedwill said.
Following 2009’s election, which was marred by widespread vote-rigging, Manawi said that new measures were taken to ensure more “transparent elections” this year.
The UN-backed Electoral Complaint Commission (ECC) has disqualified a total of 36 candidates on charges of having links with illegal armed groups, Manawi said.
He also said that his office had already ordered more than 12 million ballot papers, 25 percent of which have already been printed.