Concerns mount over voter registration fraud in Kunduz

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AT-KABUL: The civil society activists in the northern province of Kunduz say that there is a “widespread” fraud in the voter registration process as well as national ID distribution, calling it a matter of concern.

Zaher Mosleh, a civil society activist and representative of the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA), said Tuesday at a news briefing that if the fraud in national ID distribution and the voter registration was not prevented, the October legislative election would be full of fraud and unacceptable.

“Fraud continues from the beginning until now in the most of the registration centers. For example; one person can take ID card for 10 to 20 people just by taking their photos. Also, one person takes the IDs of others for attaching stickers,” said Mosleh.

Sayed Rahom Mousavi, another civil society activist and representative of the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA), said: “The mobile teams that were assigned to issue ID cards to people in remote areas, are used as political tools. Influential individuals try to appoint their persons in the teams to issue ID cards only to those people who are closed to them. When other people refer to take ID cards, they are told that they had already had ID cards.”

These activists asked for serious assessment by the government and the Independent Election Commission to prevent the fraud.

Malalai Saad, another civil society activist, warned that: “If the government does not provide full security on the election day, most of the voters especially women would not go to polling stations and this deprives women from their political rights.”

Enayatollah Khaliq, head of provincial civil society office, asked the election commission to give the chance to the civil society activists to monitor election process.

But, provincial officials assured the civil society activists and the people in Kunduz that nobody would get the chance to interfere in the electoral process.