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| Afghanistan |
| Men Attempt To Rig Five Ballot Boxes In Khost |
| 2014-04-08 |
[Tolo News] According to local Khost officials, gunnies broke into the Independent Election Commission's (IEC) central office Sunday night and attempted to fill five locked ballot boxes with fradulent votes. Security forces have reportedly juggedDrop the rod and step away witcher hands up! two individuals in connection to the incident, one of which was said to be a member of the Afghan cops and the other a local IEC employee. The central provincial office been closed off and Khost IEC chief Shafiq Wafa said election officials have already begun investigating the incident. As of now, it is unknown what candidate, or candidates, the men were attempting to advantage. The two men were reportedly arrested in the act. "...the police arrived in time to prevent this and the security forces have arrested two people in connection to the crime," Khost Police Chief Faizullah Ghairat said on monday. The IEC's provincial headquarters in Khost is located just 20-50 meters away from the National Directorate of Security's (NDS) provincial office. Homayoun Homayoun, the Chairman of Parliament's Defense Committee and a member of Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai presidential campaign, implicated supporters of Zalmai Rassoul ... former foreign minister and a very close confidant of Hamid Karzai. Before serving as foreign minister Rassoul also spent seven years laboring as a national security adviser to the president. An ethnic Pashtun born in Kabul, Rassoul was the valedictorian of his class at the illustrious Franco-American school in Kabul, Lycee Istiqal. He has an MD from the Paris Medical School in France..... when news of the incident broke. "As a member of Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai's campaign, I visited Khost and saw that the ballot boxes were broken into," Homayoun said. "I saw that votes for Ghani had been taken out and new votes were included in favor of Zalmai Rassoul." However, if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well... Rassoul's campaign team has categorically rejected the allegations. The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) reported in Monday that it had received 600 complaints regarding fraud during Saturday's historic vote, which marked the first democratic transition of power in Afghanistan's history. Many of the complaints were said to have come from the presidential candidates themselves. Although Afghan and international observers have applauded the process, and compared the vote positively to the 2009 election, which was marred by irregularities, reports of ballot box stuffing and voter fraud have increased in the days since the election. With many of these reports still unverified, however, Saturday's vote remains widely regarded as a resounding success in light of the unexpectedly high voter turnout and general security maintained around the country. |
| Posted by:Fred |