AFGHANISTAN POLLS DELAY

AFGHANISTAN POLLS DELAY

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August 8, 2022

Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission has postponed parliamentary elections, pushing them back from the scheduled May 22 to September 18. Fazil Manawi, a senior election commissioner, told reporters in the Afghan capital Kabul that the decision had been made due to a shortage of funding and lack of security. The postponement removes a potential source of friction between Hamid Karzai, the newly re-elected president, and his Western backers just days before an international conference in London on Afghanistan’s future on January 28. Although the United Nations is holding tens of millions of dollars in an account to pay for elections in Afghanistan, diplomats have said they cannot allow those funds to be released unless election reforms are carried out first. Kai Eide, the senior UN representative in Afghanistan welcomed the delay, saying it gave the electoral institutions additional time to carry out the necessary preparations.