TALKING POINTS

Briefing by Ray Kennedy, Vice Chairman of the Joint Electoral Management Body

The Joint Electoral Management Body understands that vote counting has ended in all counting centres, we are now awaiting the unofficial results from the Secretariat.

Members of the JEMB have been traveling to various counting centres this week to get a first hand view of the ballot boxes that have been placed in quarantine so that we can issue final instructions to the Secretariat on the disposition of those boxes.

As I mentioned last week, one of our guiding principles is to count ballots that we believe have been cast in accordance with the requirements of voters casting individual secret ballots and to disqualify ballots only where we see compelling evidence that they were not honestly cast. After looking at many of these quarantined ballot boxes ourselves and reviewing the formal reports that we will receive from the regional electoral coordinators, we will unfortunately but undoubtedly have to instruct the Secretariat to exclude many or even all of these quarantined ballot boxes from counting.

In our visits, we have seen ballot boxes from various regions of the country with ballots stacked neatly inside them in two piles, something that could not have occurred if the ballots were inserted one by one by the voters in the normal course of voting. In other boxes, we have seen multitudes of ballot papers folded together in ways that could simply not have occurred if proper procedures had been followed.

The regional electoral coordinators’ decisions to place ballot boxes in quarantine have been largely taken with full knowledge and participation of political party and independent candidate agents, who have generally demonstrated a high level of maturity in dealing with these boxes. We appreciate their understanding and their commitment to being the eyes and ears of the voters during the counting process.

We will await the complete unofficial results from the Secretariat, and the reports of the Media Commission, the Expert Panel and our own internal Complaints and Investigations Unit before certifying the results of the election. We expect to receive these reports in the next few days and will then need time to analyze and discuss them before making our final statement on the elections.

Questions & Answers

Question: When you say these ballots are being excluded, does that mean that the unofficial figures posted on the website is then going to be the complete figure now? Can we expect that unofficial figure to hit 100 percent at some point?

Ray Kennedy: The counting progress page on the website was based on estimates of how many people voted. In other words, some of the ballot boxes that came in were counted. We knew how many votes were in them, we knew how many more ballot boxes were supposed to come in but we did not know exactly how many ballots were in each ballot box. But a projection was made of how many ballots there were overall based on some early quantity of boxes. So the percentage figures on the counting progress page are not based on the actual number of votes that have been cast but are an earlier estimate.

Question: Given that you know you are expecting these reports in order to offset us hassling you all the time do you have any indication it might likely be Saturday or Sunday or just more of a ball park time when this is expected to be completed?

Ray Kennedy: I don’t see how it could be Saturday or Sunday.

Question: I have a question about the allegations of cheating. How many boxes are you disqualifying from the elections and can this disqualification for cheating have any effect on the outcome of the preliminary results which say that Hamed Karzai has more than 50 percent of the vote and that there will not be the need for a runoff, can this change those preliminary results we are seeing?

Ray Kennedy: What we seem to be looking at is a hundred thousand votes or less and so it would appear that a change in the effective results of the election is not something that is going to happen now. Some of the candidates farther down the list as far as vote totals may end up switching places with a candidate above them or below them in vote totals. But as far as the leader, no it would not seem that there is any possibility that these boxes would change that. Right now the numbers that we have received from the Secretariat are that we are looking at 163 boxes and we estimate that we’re talking at most one percent, or so, of the votes.

Question: And the possibility of a runoff, you don’t think that’s likely?

Ray Kennedy: No, I’ve said that I don’t see this changing the effective outcome.

Question: Is it safe to say that boxes are not being counted and the second question is which provinces are these boxes coming from?

Ray Kennedy: We have not yet received official reports from regional coordinators but we understand that counting has been completed in all counting centres. I was in Kunduz on Tuesday and when I left the Kunduz Counting Centre at the end of the day there were 56 boxes remaining to be counted yesterday.

The boxes are all over in various quantities. Five or six members of the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) are right now at the Kabul Counting Centre where there are just over 70 ballot boxes in quarantine. That’s 70 out of a total of 163. And that includes the 71 here in the Kabul Counting Centre include boxes both from the central region and from out-of-country. And then there’s a concentration in Kandahar where two of us went yesterday. There are a number in Gardez where another team went on Monday. There are boxes in Central Highlands. There are a few boxes scattered around elsewhere, so it’s not in one location.

Question: Just to make sure I understand you well, none of these 163 ballot boxes will be counted. We are completely over with it?

Ray Kennedy: There may be one. We are still awaiting reports form the Secretariat about these boxes. On the basis of those we will make a decision. But I can also tell you that having seen quite a number of these boxes myself over the last couple of days in various counting centres that the ones that are left do seem to be very hardcore. I mean the Regional Coordinators are experienced election professionals and they would know a stuffed ballot box when they see one. From what we’ve seen they certainly appear to be stuffed.

Question: Did the stuffed ballot boxes tend to favor one candidate in particular or were they more on a regional basis, and is there any news to look at an investigation at prosecuting those who might have been responsible for it?

Ray Kennedy: As I’ve said the boxes are scattered around the country in various concentrations and we are not counting them, so we are not looking at whom they might or might not have favored. The fact that they are stuffed is reason enough for us not to proceed any further with them. And yes, the issue of prosecution is certainly a live one. Our own Investigations and Complaints Unit will be receiving the reports on these stuffed ballot boxes. They will be ascertaining the names of the polling staff from those locations and they will be pursuing investigations and I would imagine that eventually information may be turned over to the Prosecutors Office on some of those boxes for further action.

Question: Has the International Panel of Election Experts presented its report to the JEMB yet?

Ray Kennedy: No the panel has not presented its report to the JEMB.

Question: The 163 boxes, does that include the ones set aside by the panel? Has the panel resolved the issues on, I think it was, 13 or 14 remaining boxes, and what do they do with them, do they put them aside or do they include them in the count?

Ray Kennedy: The panel has recommended that all but 12 of the boxes that they had initially requested be isolated, be released into the process. The JEMB took that action several days ago. There are 12 boxes remaining in quarantine on recommendation of the panel. The panel has now advised us that we can pursue our own investigations in relation to those boxes. They would just like to be present when anything happens in relation to those boxes. So essentially they have been released back into our own quarantine holding with the only caveat being that they would like to be present if boxes are opened.

Question: You said you are not expecting a final declaration this weekend, then do you expect one before or after November 2nd, and do you expect to make a press conference? How is this going to happen?

Ray Kennedy: Basically the approach that we are taking is that there is a process that needs to take place and that process will take that time that it requires. Whether it is before or after the 2nd of November is irrelevant to the JEMB. We have our own election to be concerned about and that is what we are concerned about.

How we are going to announce it is not 100 percent clear yet. I anticipate that there will be a press statement, but we have not yet finalized details on the rest of it.

Question: The turnout figures on the website seem to be still incomplete, could you explain why before the counting is being done how come we don’t have a complete turnout figure?

Ray Kennedy: I think the explanation for that is that they’ve been busy focusing on the results and not focusing on the turnout numbers. I’ve been focusing on other things and not on the turnout.

Question: You say there are 100,000 cheated ballots basically, you say it’s less than one percent of the total vote, but that’s still an awful lot. Are these signs of systematic cheating in your mind? Does this undermine the legitimacy of this election as some of the opposition candidates have charged? Would you still call this a democratic, free and fair election?

Ray Kennedy: Even if it’s one percent I don’t consider that a large number. If you look at elections around the world I’d say that’s well within reason, particularly in situations such as those prevailing here in Afghanistan, and as for as a statement on the quality of the election itself that will come as part of our final statement and not today.

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