Afghanistan Times
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AT News Report
KABUL: A number of presidential candidates and political parties – who deem President Ghani’s stay in office beyond term as illegal – on Wednesday declared that in case of rigged presidential poll they would jointly take some crucial decisions to decide the future of the country.
Ahmad Wali Masood, a presidential contender, said “President Ghani has indirectly and prematurely started electoral campaign. He is inaugurating repetitive projects and visits provinces without any specific aim and spends sums from the State Treasury to benefit his campaign.”
Meanwhile, the opposition also said that Ghani’s official mandate in office had ended on May 22nd and the current government had no legitimacy.
“We have other options as well. One of them might be to ask the president to step down and let the administration be led by an interim person after July 23.”
Masood says that the government has miserably failed in ensuring security and stability, adding that the National Unity Government (NUG) has kept the peace and election processes vague and obscure.
The presidential hopeful accused the government of ensuring its existence through continuation of war, adding Ghani administration misused the efforts of peace to meet its interests.
Meanwhile, Abdul Lateef Nazari, the second vice president in the National Consensus Team, called for serious measures against those people who have been recently accused of sexual abuse at the Presidential Palace.
Farida Momand, the first vice president running in the National Consensus ticket, said that the allegations of sexual molestation and issue of working systematically to promote adultery at the Presidential Palace had arisen grave concerns among Afghan women and forced them to retreat form political arena.
This comes as the opposition over the past few weeks have been consistently lambasting Ghani and warned of amassing huge gatherings against the government for operating beyond legal term.
The presidential election is scheduled for September 28 which some critics deem unlikely because all the efforts are directed towards peace. On top of that, as the peace process has also taken a huge positive turn recently, US negotiators hope to hammer out a peace settlement before September 1.
