KABUL: Four days after Afghanistan began a massive audit of millions of votes cast in the run-off presidential election, disagreements and a shortage of observers have slowed progress.

The audit of all 8.1 million ballots cast in the June 14 run-off round was agreed by rival candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, following a deal brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The bitter impasse over the vote to succeed President Hamid Karzai, following Abdullah’s claims of massive fraud, had plunged Afghanistan into crisis and raised fears of a return to the ethnic violence of the 1990s.

The audit began last Thursday and the Independent Election Commission (IEC) said last week it was planned to take around three weeks, with teams working in two shifts auditing around 1,000 ballot boxes a day.

But with only 435 ballot boxes checked since Thursday, the exercise is expected to take longer than planned.

The 48-hour dash to save Afghanistan’s election

“The process has been slower than expected. There are not enough international observers, the IEC was not ready for the process (when it was announced), it is a new experience for them,” Fahim Naeemi, spokesman for a group called Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan, told AFP.

“There are no criteria for the invalidation of unclean votes. They can audit, but they cannot invalidate votes yet. “On Saturday the checking was brie­fly suspended by a dispute over a batch of potentially spoilt ballots.

The contested ballot papers, whose number and origin were not specified, were deemed void by one candidate’s team as they lacked a full name and signature, according to an IEC spokesman.

“The disagreement was on signatures on data forms, a candidate claimed they were not properly signed,” spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor told reporters.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2014