Afghanistan to hold parliamentary elections in 2018

The Afghanistan Independent Election Commission (IEC) says the parliamentary elections will hold in 2018, an election official said on Thursday. “The plan is to hold the elections by the end of this solar year,” Imam Mohammad Warymoch, the IEC’s chief electoral officer, told dpa. A solar year goes from March to March which would put […]

The Afghanistan Independent Election Commission (IEC) says the parliamentary elections will hold in 2018, an election official said on Thursday.

“The plan is to hold the elections by the end of this solar year,” Imam Mohammad Warymoch, the IEC’s chief electoral officer, told dpa.

A solar year goes from March to March which would put the elections well into 2018.

The elections were initially supposed to be held by May 2015 as the mandate of the five-year parliament ended in June.

However, due to tussles over election reforms as well as the composition of the election commission, the elections had to be delayed several times.

Warymoch said no exact date has been set due to “many open questions,” for example security issues.

The war with the Afghan Taliban deteriorated particularly fast after most international troops left the country at the end of 2014.

According to U.S. sources, the Afghan government currently controls less than 60 per cent of Afghan territory, while more than 40 per cent are either contested or fully controlled by the Taliban.

This raises serious concerns for the election commission as nearly half of the country might be inaccessible or too insecure for preparations and the actual vote.

The government is also looking into an e-voting system, Warymoch said. Without wanting to go into detail, he added that it could prevent voter fraud, a major issue in previous elections.

Warymoch said that an e-voting system could cost around 230 million dollars.

He said that negotiations with the international community were ongoing.