Consultation Meeting between the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)

Date: 12 September 2019

Time: 0900 hrs.

Participants: Representatives of 10 CSOs working in elections, including ACSFO, FEFA, TIFA and ETWA

Venue: ECC, Kabul
 

Key Highlights

Deputy Chairperson Molawi Din Mohammad Azmi opened the session and welcomed the representatives of CSOs. He shared the mandate of ECC in registering and adjudicating electoral complaints and objections and emphasized on a mutual responsibility of all electoral stakeholders including CSOs, Presidential candidates, political parties, national and international communities and citizens in conducting a fair and transparent election. He also urged candidates to increase their electoral campaign in order to motivate citizens to participate in the upcoming election. He informed that in order to facilitate registration of complaints on the E-day complaints forms and sensitive materials will be sent to all the polling centers.

Spokesperson Qasim Elyasi emphasized on the importance of the electoral transparency and stressed on the important role of CSOs and other bodies responsible for supervising and observing the elections for promoting electoral justice and conducting of a transparent election. He stressed that all complaints should be timely reported.

CEO Chaman Shah Etemadi thanked CSOs working on elections for their continued support and cooperation and added that their support and suggestions will be valuable in organizing an acceptable election.

Deputy CEO Yasin Hamraz informed about the establishment of the Call Center at ECC and explained about complaints registration and adjudication process.

The representatives of CSOs thanked ECC for organizing the coordination meeting and asked further questions to have a better clarity on complaints registration and adjudication process.

They added that the establishment of the Call Center is useful for stakeholders to get clarity on their queries, similarly they express their confidence that the EDR case management system will speed up the adjudication process of electoral complaints. They suggested that ECC to appoint professional employees to operate an electronic case management system and adjudicate complaints.

Some of the specific suggestions made by CSOs are:

• Increase the frequency of press conferences and media engagement to regularly update public about complaints registration and adjudication process
• Ensure allocation of specific places for security forces and electoral monitors on the E-day
• The activities of provincial employees should be closely monitored
• Need for Increased coordination between IEC and ECC
• Ensure a good cooperation with the political parties for acceptance of the election results
• Regular engagement with public and other stakeholders for information sharing
• Need to increase public awareness campaign by IEC

END