AFGHANISTAN: Vote counting under way

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

KABUL, 20 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - Counting of votes in Afghanistan’s landmark parliamentary and provincial elections began on Tuesday, while the transportation of 130,000 ballot boxes from 6,000 polling stations to provincial counting centres continued, electoral officials said.

"Almost 80 percent of polling material has arrived at the counting centres at 32 locations nationwide. Over the next couple of days all ballot boxes should have arrived. The vote counting has started in some places," Peter Erben, Chief Electoral Officer at the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), said in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

On Tuesday morning, two rockets were fired at buildings close to a vote-counting centre in the eastern city of Jalalabad, capital of the volatile Nangarhar province, injuring two policemen.

JEMB spokesman Baheen Sultan Ahmad said vote counting had not yet started in Jalalabad, which has counting centres for three provinces, because of security concerns. A roadside bomb exploded near a truck carrying ballots in Nangarhar on Sunday, the day of the election, but caused no damage.

Some 12.5 million Afghan voters – 44 percent of them female - were given the opportunity to elect a national assembly and 34 provincial legislatures for a five-year term. Almost 5,800 candidates contested the poll, including over 2,700 for the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga (lower house of parliament) and more than 3,000 for 420 seats in 34 provincial councils.

In some parts of the country, more women voted than men, while in the southern province of Zabul, the poll was made up of 13 percent women and 87 percent men.

Results are not expected for around two weeks: in some places lengthy ballot papers carrying hundreds of nominees need to be carefully gone through by election officials.

Vote counting in last October’s historic presidential poll, which was a lot simpler to process, took three weeks.

Although polling day passed off without major incident, a preliminary report by the European Union (EU) observer mission said shortcomings during the campaign included intimidation, intervention by officials, inadequate voter lists and killings of candidates and election workers.

[ENDS]