KABUL, Oct 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Afghans are bracing for more deadly
violence on Saturday as voting gets under way in the long-delayed legislative
election that the Taliban has vowed to attack.
Polling centres opened at 7:00 am (0230 GMT) across the war-torn country,
with some 54,000 security forces deployed to protect them.
But there are concerns the killing of a powerful police chief in southern
Afghanistan on Thursday will scare off many voters.
Polling has been delayed in Kandahar province until October 27 after a
Taliban-claimed attack on a US-Afghan security meeting that killed three
people, including General Abdul Raziq.
General Scott Miller, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan,
escaped injury in the shooting, but 13 others were wounded.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Friday urged voters to turn
out to cast their ballots — but “vote only once” — and called on others not
to interfere in the process.
“They should observe impartiality in the election so that we have a
transparent, impartial and fair election in Afghanistan,” IEC chief Abdul
Badi Sayyad told reporters.
– Taliban threats –
Almost nine million people have registered to vote in the parliamentary
election, which is more than three years late and only the third since the
fall of the Taliban in 2001.
But the threat of militant attacks and expectations for massive fraud are
expected to deter many voters from showing up at the more than 5,000 polling
centres.
In the days leading up to the poll, the Taliban issued several statements
urging candidates to withdraw and voters to boycott what the group calls a
“malicious American conspiracy”.
Shambolic preparations for the ballot have been made worse by a wave of
poll-related violence that has left hundreds dead or wounded.
At least 10 candidates out of more than 2,500 contesting the lower-house
election have been killed so far.
The most recent victim was Abdul Jabar Qahraman, who was blown up
Wednesday by a bomb placed under his sofa in the southern province of
Helmand.
Most of the candidates are political novices and include doctors, mullahs
and journalists. Those with the deepest pockets are expected to win.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which has
spearheaded international efforts to keep Afghan organisers on track, on
Friday called on voters to “exercise their constitutional right to vote”.
The poll is seen as a crucial test for next year’s presidential election
and an important milestone ahead of a UN meeting in Geneva in November where
Afghanistan is under pressure to show progress on “democratic processes”.
But the 11th hour introduction of biometric voter verification machines,
which have never been used in an Afghan election, threatens to derail the
process.
Observers are concerned the results could be thrown into turmoil if the
devices are broken, lost or destroyed.
There are also fears the data could be manipulated before preliminary
results are released on November 10.
Votes cast without the controversial machines will not be counted, the IEC
has said, even though polling centre workers have received little or no
training in how to use them.