Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: Candidates

Candidates

Afghanistan’s 2019 elections (2): Who is running to become the next president?

Ali Yawar Adili

The Independent Election Commission has published the preliminary list of the 2019 presidential candidates. The list includes 18 candidates. It should now go through a vetting process and a challenge and appeal period before it is finalised and published on 26 March, according to the electoral calendar. AAN’s researcher, Ali Yawar Adili, looks at the […]

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Afghanistan Election Conundrum (19): A young ‘wave of change’ for the Wolesi Jirga?

AAN Team Thomas Ruttig

Afghanistan’s parliamentary election campaign ended on Wednesday 17 October 2018 with the killing of Helmand candidate Jabbar Qahraman by a mine explosion in his campaign office – the fifth candidate killed during the campaign period. “Taghir” – change – has been a key word in many of the campaigns and a hope expressed by many […]

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10 days 15 hours, 35 minutes and 13 seconds to go: The IEC's count down to the 20 October 2018 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan. Source: Screenshot from the IEC website, at the time of uploading this dispatch

Afghanistan Election Conundrum (16): Basic facts about the parliamentary elections

AAN Team Thomas Ruttig

Afghanistan’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has posted a clock on its home page that counts down the time remaining until the 20 October parliamentary election (minus Ghazni province). That’s a nice gag. It would also have been good if a counter had been provided to show, for example, the total number of registered voters (on its […]

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Elections 2014 (49): Still deadlock, make or break

Kate Clark

It has become difficult to write about the Afghan elections, not because nothing happens, but because it rarely amounts to anything significant enough to move things on. There are talks between the candidates, press conferences with little news, an audit nearing completion, phone calls from the American president, rumours and unease. The optimism of the […]

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Dividing the Field: Who shapes the electoral landscape in a Herat township – and how?

S Reza Kazemi

In Herat, elders have divided a township into areas supporting different presidential contenders. They are motivated by financial and other benefits and a desire to end up on the winning side in any case. But they are also divided, mainly along political party lines. This heralds the coming of potentially highly contested presidential and provincial […]

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Not a Promising Start: The vetting of the presidential and provincial council candidates

Gran Hewad Kate Clark

Buried in a pre-election assessment report by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) are concerns about the transparency with which presidential and provincial council candidates have been vetted. Peter Manikas, NDI’s Asia director, said at a press conference earlier this month that they were concerned that “a number of people who should have been eligible candidates […]

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Candidates on Camera: Interviewing the next president of Afghanistan

Kate Clark

Although campaigning for the presidential elections does not officially start until February 2014, the media has started interviewing the eleven candidates. This is a time for journalists to find out their plans and try to elicit specific promises on what they will or will not do should they become president. Most candidates have pasts to […]

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Monitors protest expulsion of 16 candidates for Afghan president

AAN Team

Reuters, 23 October 2013 Quoting FEFA and some disqualified candidates protesting against the IEC reduction of the presidential contenders’ field, the report quotes AAN’s Kate Clark from her latest dispatch: Kate Clark, of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said the election had started with accusations of serious fraud and a further limitation of choice. “It is not a […]

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And Then They Were Ten: Preliminary final list of presidential candidates out

Kate Clark

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has purged the list of presidential hopefuls for the 2014 election from 27 candidates to 10, saying the rest had failed to meet the criteria for standing. It said they either had second nationalities or had failed to amass enough voter cards to support their candidacy. Those who have been […]

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Not a pleasant prospect

AAN Team

The Economist, 12 October 2013 Martine van Bijlert’s AAN dossier on elections is quoted in an article looking at the field of presidential aspirants in Afghanistan, saying: “An article by Martine van Bijlert of the Afghan [sic] Analysts Network, a respected research group, lists the problems: a defective voter registry; millions of available voter cards […]

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A Leader Apologises: General Dostum, elections and war crimes

Kate Clark

For the first time, a senior Afghan has made a public apology to those of his compatriots who suffered during the war. General Abdul Rashid Dostum, leader of the largely Uzbek Jombesh party / ex military faction, made the statement a day after registering as running mate to Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai in the presidential elections. […]

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The Last Minute Frenzy of Afghanistan’s Candidate Registration

Martine van Bijlert

The registration for Afghanistan’s 2014 presidential election continued until the very late hours of 6 October 2013. Although it was to be expected that the political horse-trading and deal-making would continue until the last minute, the scramble that finally ensued took everybody by surprise and mixed up all electoral alliances that had been forged in the weeks before. The AAN team […]

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