UN continues to respond to Afghan presidential candidates' technical concerns on audit

The UN mission in Afghanistan on Monday said that it continues to respond to presidential candidates' technical concerns during the ongoing audit process.

"Even as the comprehensive audit of the presidential run-off approaches completion, the United Nations is continuing to respond to new technical issues and concerns when raised by the presidential campaigns. This is part of its previously stated commitment to work with both campaigns to respond to any issues which would further the overall objective of the audit to separate fraudulent ballots from valid votes," the mission said in a statement.

The Afghan presidential election was held on April 5 and since none of the eight candidates had won more than 50 percent of the votes, two leading candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai went for a runoff on June 14.

Preliminary results showed that Ghani went ahead. However, former Foreign Minister Abdullah refused to accept the outcome and accused the election commissions of committing fraud and demanded a vote recount.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry brokered an agreement between the two presidential candidates on July 12, breaking the election deadlock and paving the way for the formation of a national unity government. The two runners accepted a 100 percent audit of nearly 8 million ballots.

Earlier on the day, a spokesman for Abdullah gave an ultimatum to election commission and its rival team until Tuesday afternoon saying "if our technical demands during audit are not met we will leave both technical and political process."

"Recently, on Aug. 23, the Reform and Partnership Team ( Abdullah's team) raised claims of similar handwriting being found across multiple results sheets. If supported by evidence, the existence of similar signatures on results sheets from different geographic locations would require a thorough investigation and robust response. At this point, however, the UN would caution against making predictions about the possible impact of these claims before a proper inquiry has been carried out," the statement said.

To enable such an inquiry, the UN mission said that "the UN requested the Reform and Partnership Campaign to provide it with supporting evidence for their claims, as well as a letter formally requesting this issue to be brought to the attention of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).

"On Aug. 28, Abdullah's team provided the UN with printed copies of the results sheets from the approximately 2,200 polling stations it claims display similar handwriting. Although a letter asking the UN to formally bring these claims to the attention of the IEC was only received yesterday, the UN has already introduced the issue to the IEC," the statement noted.

Prior to receiving this documentation, the UN established a dedicated seven-person team from among the electoral experts participating in the audit. The team conducted research to ascertain whether the issue of similar handwriting across multiple results sheets has been raised in any other countries' elections and, to date, has only identified one case. The expert team also prepared a draft proposal with investigation procedures and invalidation criteria for handling these claims that was shared with the IEC Secretariat on 31 August, according to the statement.

"The UN has meanwhile informed the Continuity and Change Campaign (Ghani's team) of existence of claims of similar handwriting across multiple results forms so that it has the opportunity to respond accordingly," it said.