Briefing by Manoel de Almeida e Silva, Spokesman for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General

17 October

I have one very brief note and then we will have a special briefing by Ray Kennedy, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Electoral Management Body [JEMB]. Yesterday I told you the last ballot boxes are coming in today from Iran to the Kabul counting centre and to Kunduz from Badakhshan. The boxes coming from Iran will be coming at 4:30 in the afternoon and the boxes from Badakhshan will be delayed, because of the weather conditions and helicopter flying requirements, this will not happen today. We hope it will happen tomorrow, we will keep you posted and we're talking about four ballot boxes.

An helicopter going to the Wakhan corridor, hopefully tomorrow, will bring the four ballot boxes and six people who were there to run elections on the October 9.

This is all I have for you, if you have any questions I will be happy to take them. Otherwise I would like to invite the special expert briefer today, Ray Kennedy, who is the Vice Chairman of the Joint Electoral Management Body. He will talk to you about the complaints and investigation mechanisms of the JEMB.

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

Thank you. Manoel had indicated to us that there was interest among the journalists in knowing more about the general complaints procedures in place with JEMB.

The first point is that the JEMB has been handling complaints throughout this process, beginning with the registration process, followed by the period when we accepted challenges to the nominations of candidates, and now polling day and the counting process.

The next point is that there are different processes depending on when and where a complaint is lodged. On election day, complaints related specifically to the polling procedures themselves were to be resolved by the polling station committee, that is, the five staff working at the polling station, preferably unanimously and if not unanimously, then by at least a two-thirds majority, which in essence would mean four of the five members of the polling station staff.

Complaints on election day other then those relating to polling procedures were to be submitted to the provincial field coordinator, who would make a decision. If the provincial field coordinator was unable to make a decision in a timely manner, or if the person making the complaint was not satisfied with the decision of the provincial field coordinator, than there was a possibility of appealing the issue to the regional coordinator to make a decision.

Finally on election day, complaints related to issues at the provincial level or above were to go directly to the JEMB. We have an Investigations Officer that we refer matters to for additional information gathering, and once we receive reports from the Investigations Officer we will consider those issues and make decisions on them.

You are probably more interested in the complaints process for counting, which is what is going on now. Initially those complaints should go to a three-person committee within the counting centre - the Counting Centre Manager, the Provincial Field Coordinator and the National Provincial Field Coordinator. There is a possibility of appealing decisions of that three-person committee. The appeal would be to the Regional Coordinator, and if there was still not satisfaction, those issues could be appealed to the JEMB.

In handling complaints, the JEMB has a number of guiding principles to work by. The first of those is the right to complain itself and as well, the duty to examine complaints, or the duty to investigate complaints. As you can see from the description earlier, there are generally separate jurisdictions examining complaints, in other words, the person or persons examining a complaint are to the extent possible different from the person or persons against whom the complaint is made.

The next [step] is the right to appeal which I have mentioned in these various cases. The next one which to me is one of the most important, is to respect the value of the individual's vote and not take any rash action unless there is a compelling reason to believe there was fraud. In other words, we would have to have fairly substantial evidence of wrong doing before we would throw out an individual's vote that we believe was otherwise cast honestly in the process. And finally, and overall, simply to seek the truth and take any necessary action.

What we have seen during this process is that most complaints are oral and not always backed up by the facts that we need to investigate them. We have also seen that very often the complaints are simply a result of a lack of understanding of the procedures that are in place for the election, and that once someone explains the procedures to the person making a complaint, there are many fewer complaints.

Finally, and this I think is a point of tribute to all of the thousands of Afghans who have worked in this process, some of the complaints forms that we have received accompanying the ballot boxes are not actually complaints, they are in essence thank you letters to the staff of the JEMB for their hard work and dedication in carrying out this election process.

Questions & Answers

Question: What you have just explained is a very comprehensive and thorough complaints procedure that has been in place for quite a while. Why was it then for the election day itself there was this sudden hasty need to form another panel to look into complaints? Was this just a political sop towards the candidates or was there genuinely a breakdown in your mechanisms that simply wouldn't have worked?

Ray Kennedy: I don't think there was a breakdown in the process; there were a couple of things going on. First of all, as I've said, we have seen throughout this process that people have generally preferred to make oral complaints and when we asked them to put them in writing we discovered that there were many fewer complaints than there are oral complaints, even when we offer to assist people in writing down complaints. A lot of times, they don't want to put it in writing. Second of all, you were probably aware that one of the candidates' first issues on election day was the JEMB itself. That is something the Coordination Council had questioned since their formation in August. And so even though our processes exist and are handling complaints, they did not want to use those processes.

Question: When will you be able to release the results of the investigation? And secondly, if there is evidence there have been irregularities in the electoral process, what will be your position?

Ray Kennedy: I'm not sure when we will be able to release results of investigations. Those investigations are on going at this point, and we'll have to see when and how quickly they come in. As far as if something shows that there was an irregularity in the process, as I said the other day, we have to balance that, we have to look at whether it would substantively affect the outcome of the election. If we are talking about irregularities regarding one ballot box and the difference in the election is large then obviously even excluding that ballot box from the result would not change the actual outcome of the election as far as which candidate wins and which candidate does not win. We will just have to see what comes in from these investigations before making any firm decision on the electoral process. But I think the people have said that they are satisfied with the process.

As I explained earlier, there are various types of complaints depending on when and where they are filed. The numbers that I have in front of me refer to the complaints that are found on complaint forms in the ballot boxes as they are received. As of this morning, that number was approximately 250. Also as I mentioned, some of those turn out to be compliments rather than complaints. These investigations are on going, and we expect results from many of them soon and should be able to address them as we receive the results of the investigations.

As far as complaints from the counting process itself, as I explained earlier there is a process in place for dealing with those at the counting centre, and only in the case of a second appeal would that reach the JEMB. I do not have numbers of complaints that have been raised at the Counting Centres as yet, and I'm not aware of any appeals having reached the JEMB in relation to the counting process as of now.

Question: Is it possible to announce the results of the counting process before the results of the investigation, and do you think that in that case the results of the counting will be seen as valid?

Ray Kennedy: The JEMB Secretariat is releasing preliminary partial results now. They will eventually reach a point where they have complete but unofficial results. At that point, they will hand those complete unofficial results to the JEMB. Now the JEMB, in order to make a final determination on the election, will look at those complete unofficial results, side by side with the results of the investigations and the entire complaints process, before we issue official results.

Question: You said that most complaints received were originally oral and given that 80% of the population is illiterate, what percentage did you have to (rest of question is inaudible).

Ray Kennedy: Elections staff throughout the process have been instructed to assist those voters who were not able to write in putting their complaints in writing and getting those to the appropriate officials in the process.

Question: What have you done with the number of ballot boxes placed in quarantine?

Ray Kennedy: The number of ballot boxes in quarantine fluctuates during the course of the day. Sometimes boxes are put in quarantine because the paperwork can't be found immediately with the ballot box, and then they put the ballot box in quarantine and go looking for the paperwork, and when they find the paperwork they can take it out. The boxes that were put in quarantine on the recommendation of the expert panel are still in quarantine. The expert panel have asked for copies of the paperwork related to those ballot boxes, which the Secretariat is currently in the process of gathering and forwarding to the expert panel. And then we will await a further recommendation from the expert panel before we consider releasing those boxes from quarantine.

Question: How many ballot boxes were quarantined on the recommendation of the Panel? And roughly how many votes would that come to?

Ray Kennedy: I don't have that number with me. I know that it was approximately ten polling stations and ten polling centres, but how many polling stations there were in each of those polling centres, I'm not sure. I have also heard that just as a precaution, the Secretariat had, when we had instructed them to isolate boxes from a particular station, they had gone ahead and isolated all of the boxes from that centre. But I don't have a final number of how many boxes were affected by that.

Question: In another press conference we heard of some 100 complaints. Now you are referring to some 250 complaints. Could you explain? And also, some voters have misgivings that their votes might be given to candidates which they did not vote for. How do you respond to these allegations?

Ray Kennedy: In relation to the number of complaints, as I mentioned, the number that I gave, the approximately 250, are the number taken out of the paperwork accompanying the ballot boxes. We're still in the process of receiving ballot boxes. Most of them have been received now but there are still a few coming in so that number may still increase a little bit. As for the votes and how they are sorted and counted, there are agents of the various candidates watching the counting process very closely and making clear to us when they believe there is any possibility of votes being counted for the wrong candidates. We are very happy that there are agents there watching that process, and part of the purpose of having them there is to help give the voters comfort that someone is watching out for them and making sure that their vote is counted correctly.

There may also be some confusion because of the numbers presented by, or on behalf of the expert panel and the numbers that we are dealing with coming from the tamper evident bags accompanying the ballot boxes. The expert panel has in fact received approximately 100 complaints that they are dealing with. The 250 that I cited plus any appeals coming from the Counting Centres is separate from the process being conducted by the expert panel.

Thank you very much.