President facing backlash after rejecting list of commissioner hopefuls

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AT-KABUL: The Independent Electoral Complaints Commission says the shortage of commissioners in the provinces was a big challenge as the president rejected the list of commissioner candidates presented by the commission.

The commission says it has received 200 complaints since the release of the parliament candidates’ initial list.

Gholam Dastgir Hedayat, a commissioner of the commission, said Wednesday that people’s complaints should be met, but the rejection of commissioners’ list by president Ghani has restricted their activities.

“According to the law, we sent a list of 102 people to the presidential office, but only 27 of them were approved, while we need at least three commissioners in each province,” said Hedayat.

The list was sent to presidential office some two months ago, but the palace sent it back to the commission after a long delay, approving only 27 of the candidates.

The complaints commission has only one month from the release of candidates’ list to meet the complaint of rejected candidates in both parliament and district councils.

The commission added that president’s office did not clarify the reason of rejecting most of the commissioners.

But, president’s office claims that most of the commissioners introduced by the complaints commission were not qualified to get the post. “They (the complaints commission) should have observed all the legal processes in introducing commissioners. We tried to share this with the commission, but they were not apparently interested to cooperate with us,” said Shah Hossein Mortazavi, President Ghani’s spokesman.