Afghanistan election authorities said Thursday that some MPs were likely to be thrown out of parliament following a review of last year’s controversial election results. Afghans voted in their second post-Taliban parliamentary elections last September but disputed the final results announced by the election authorities with various factions alleging the ballot was fraudulent. President Hamid Karzai last week handed authority for resolving the electoral dispute to the Independent Election Commission (IEC).
“Some changes may likely be brought in the election results,” an IEC spokesman, Tabesh Frough, told AFP, adding that the election body was expected to give its final say as early as next week. A senior official at the IEC speaking under condition of anonymity told AFP that the final decision was “imminent” with “up to 10 MPs” likely to change. “The IEC has completed its re-assessment of the results. A change in the final results is imminent, it’s definitely going to happen,” the official told AFP. He said the MPs will be replaced by those whose votes had earlier been cancelled as fraudulent by Election Complaint Commission (ECC), a US-backed election watchdog. “Those individuals whose votes were cancelled by the ECC because of fraud will be reinstated,” the IEC official said, without specifying how many. Karzai in a presidential decree scrapped a special election tribunal that he had created to rule on election dispute last week and closed election investigations by other government bodies, handing the authority to the IEC. The tribunal had ordered 62 MPs out of parliament.
Afghans likely to change MPs after vote review
