Afghan policemen keep watch at the area where the Loya Jirga will take place later this week, in Kabul, yesterday.
KABUL: Afghanistan’s election watchdog has finalised a line-up of 11 candidates for next year’s presidential poll after reinstating one disqualified candidate, an official said yesterday.
Election authorities last month cut down the initial list of 26 candidates for the April 5 vote to 10, marking a chaotic opening stage in the country’s first democratic transfer of power.
“One candidate has been reinstated in the presidential nominees’ list and 116 changes have been made to the provincial council nominees’ list,” Independent Electoral Complaints Commission chairman Abdul Sattar Saadat told a news conference.
He did not name the candidate, saying that was the responsibility of the Independent Election Commission.
Saadat said it took his body more than three weeks of thorough investigations into candidates’ backgrounds to finalise the list.
Some candidates both in the presidential and provincial council elections who were allegedly involved in crimes such as murder, embezzlement or war crimes have been referred to prosecutors for investigation.
The bulk of Nato’s 75,000 remaining troops are due to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and a credible election -- rather than a repeat of the fraud-plagued vote of 2009 -- is seen as vital to stability.
It will be Afghanistan’s first-ever democratic power transfer since President Hamid Karzai -- appointed following the US-led invasion of 2001 -- must step down after serving two terms.
Karzai has called for just two or three candidates to run, to avoid the confusion of 2009 when 40 names appeared on the ballot paper.
Among the leading presidential candidates are former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, who ran against Karzai in 2009, the president’s low-profile elder brother Qayum Karzai and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani.
Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, a former Islamist warlord who had close ties to Al Qaeda, is also on the list, along with Karzai loyalist Zalmai Rassoul, who recently resigned as foreign minister to run.
Also on the list is former Kandahar warlord Gul Agha Sherzai, nicknamed the “bulldozer.”
Some unexpected pairings have also emerged, for example Ghani. The internationally-renowned academic chose Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum as his first running mate.
AFP
