Afghanistan Election Conundrum (1): Political pressure on commissioners puts 2018 vote in doubt Author : Ali Yawar Adili Published: 18 November 2017 Downloaded: 5 September 2018 Download URL: https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/afghanistan-election-conundrum-1-political-pressure-on-commissioners- puts-2018-vote-in-doubt/?format=pdf While struggling to prepare for the parliamentary (and supposedly also district council) elections scheduled for the 7 July 2018, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) are finding themselves under increasing fire from a growing number of political groups and election observer bodies. There have been allegations of financial corruption, government interference and divisions within the two commissions. Playing upon these issues, political groups are demanding that all the electoral commissioners be sacked and replaced with new ones. In a move possibly intended to alleviate the pressure, President Ghani has now sacked the chair of the IEC. AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili considers these demands and what they might mean for the credibility of the elections and the likelihood of them happening on time. This is part one of a series of dispatches about where the preparations for the next elections stand. The following parts will address technical issues and district elections. 1 / 7 This research was supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. The first casualty of the criticism mounting against IEC and ECC has come: on 15 November 2017, President Ashraf Ghani sacked IEC chairman Najibullah Ahmadzai, three days after five of Ahmadzai’s fellow commissioners had written to the president asking for his dismissal. The Palace issued a statement, but it was vague, just saying the government had responded to IEC members and asking “relevant institutions” to introduce fresh candidates. Ahmadzai, in turn, said the government had acted against him because he had been standing against illegal demands by the presidential palace which he said included the demand to manipulate the elections. He provided no evidence. External pressure had been mounting on the commissions, particularly since early October when a broad coordination group of political organisations and protest movements came out with fierce criticism against the two bodies. Called the Shura-ye Tafahum-e Jeryanha-ye Siyasi Afghanistan (the Understanding Council of Political Currents of Afghanistan), it demanded the complete replacement of the members of both commissions. The election commissioners are appointed by the president from a shortlist prepared by a selection committee (more on which below). The IEC has seven members, four appointed for five years and the other three for three years. The ECC has five members, three of whom are appointed for five years and the other two for three years. The current teams are completely new. The old teams were all dismissed, despite not having run to the end of their terms because they were tainted by their role in the disputed 2014 presidential elections: Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah’s camp had accused the two bodies of overseeing widespread fraud in favour of President Ghani. Operating under the assumption that the current IEC and ECC members will serve full terms, they are due to administer both upcoming elections. Parliamentary and district elections are due in 2018 – in this dispatch, we mainly refer to parliamentary elections only, as district elections have never been held before and fundamental preparations for them, including drawing up constituency boundaries, are not yet evident; we hope to look at them in more detail in a future piece. Presidential elections are due in 2019. The current IEC and ECC members were appointed and sworn in in November 2016, two months after the government finally, after a lengthy deadlock on electoral reform, managed to pass a new electoral law. Although there was some controversy at the time, both over the choice and the process of selection, (see this AAN dispatch which includes short biographies here), it had seemed that the inauguration of the new IEC and ECC had broken the protracted stalemate in the attempt to agree on electoral reforms and that these new faces could now start planning the next (already overdue) parliamentary elections. However, almost one year on after the formation of the IEC and ECC, political groups have focused their attention on the members of these electoral bodies, seizing upon allegations of financial corruption, undue presidential influence on the IEC and internal divisions in both commissions as evidence of their inability to oversee elections. It is worth noting that all the various political forces, whether in government or out of it, consider 2 / 7 it crucial who controls the two commissions, as they will play a crucial role in determining who will become Afghanistan’s next MPs and next president. They will play that role whether or not the elections are fair or rigged. This obsession with the commissions was manifested very vividly in the post-2014 electoral reform process, which, as AAN previously wrote, largely boiled down not to reform as such, but to “a tug of war over who controls the electoral bodies – and through them the election’s outcome.” Accusations and accusers The Understanding Council of Political Currents of Afghanistan, which has hoovered up most of the opposition groupings and protest movements (full list of members below), has said in its 7 October statement entitled “The Joint Position of the Understanding Council of Political Currents of Afghanistan in Connection with the Transparency of Elections,” that the IEC “with its current composition” did not have the “ability to hold transparent and fraud-free elections and is not trusted by the people or the political currents.” It claimed that the IEC lacked “independence in decision-making,” a “spirit of impartiality,” and “sufficient and necessary managerial capacity” and was marred by “financial corruption and lack of transparency in purchases and internal disputes among the members.” The Council, without giving more detail about its allegations, demanded that: In order to hold transparent, free and fair elections and prevent the elections from going into crisis… [t]he commissioners and heads of the electoral commissions [should] be dismissed as soon as possible and the National Unity Government [NUG] in agreement with political parties, civil organisations and prominent political personalities, [should] introduce and appoint other eligible members instead of them. The Council also reopened a much chewed-over, legal debate, contending that the legislative decree issued by the president to pass the electoral law had not been not valid (more on this below). Individually, members of the Understanding Council, some of whom are members or appointees of the government, had since taken up the call for the dismissal of some or all IEC members. Balkh Governor and Jamiat Chief Executive Atta Muhammad Nur, for instance, on 31 October 2017, called on the NUG to dissolve the current IEC and appoint new and “impartial commissioners.” On 16 October 2017, Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani said the current IEC did not have the ability to hold elections “at the specified time in a transparent and acceptable fashion,” citing lack of clarity on “electoral constituencies, the budget of the electoral commissions and voter registration.” Understanding Council members have also accused the NUG of lacking the political will to hold elections. Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi, a former finance minister and now head of the opposition New National Front of Afghanistan (NNFA), said on 22 October 2017 that the NUG had no intention of holding elections next year and that it was failing to recognise “the importance of time.” Ahadi’s criticism came one day after Afghan media reported that the president had sacked the head of the IEC secretariat (also known as the chief electoral officer) Imam Muhammad Warimach. Ahadi welcomed the dismissal and said he 3 / 7 hoped for more changes to the IEC). Some media reports suggested that Warimach’s dismissal was connected with him speaking in public about the political pressure he said the IEC was under – he referred to “threats to the IEC, personal insults, a propaganda campaign and fraud by some circles.” Other Afghan media, however, reported that Warimach was fired by the president over corruption and poor performance (read here and here). (For more detail on the sacking, see footnote [1].) The Understanding Council’s demand for new commissioners also came in the wake of an internal dispute within the IEC and ECC (more on this below) and at a time when the IEC is struggling to prepare for the next parliamentary (and district) elections scheduled for 7 July 2018. The parliamentary election is itself more than two years overdue and this has provided the opportunity for various political groups to doubt the NUG’s political will to hold them. So far, since 2001, no elections have been held on time – but none of them with such a long delay. Even so, as the clock ticks on this particular electoral process, both the electoral bodies and the electoral timeline are being scrutinised with increasing scepticism by both national and international observers. In Afghanistan, the findings of a recent survey conducted by the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) and released on 9 October 2017 showed that a high percentage of people were not upbeat about the IEC’s ability to administer elections effectively. According to this survey, 41 per cent of respondents do not believe that the IEC has the capacity to hold a transparent elections, while 29 per cent believe it does and 30 per cent are uncertain. TEFA did not ask whether people thought any body could oversee elections effectively, so it is not clear if the doubts are about the IEC per se or Afghan elections in general. [2] Another assessment by the Elections and Transparency Watch Organisation of Afghanistan (ETWA), released on 5 October 2017, stated that it considered the IEC to be incapable of holding parliamentary elections next year and that the necessary reforms had not been implemented.