(ATN news): Speaking among his supporters in Kabul, Abdullah warned of an electoral crisis and said the State-Builder team led by President Ashraf Ghani will be responsible for the consequences. “Without the presence of our representative to witness the partial recount process, the election results will have no legitimacy,” he said. Abdullah emphasizes that the controversial votes must be clear before there is a recount. According to Abdullah’s Stability and Partnership campaign, about 300,000 fraudulent votes are still in the system which needs to be invalidated. “We call upon the election commission to invalidate the nearly 300,000 alleged votes that have failed the biometric verification criterion or are cast outside the allowable timeframe on the Election Day,” Abdullah said. He assured his supporters that he will defend their valid votes. “We vow to defend the clean votes of the people and we will never allow the entrenchment of the electoral fraud in our country,” he added. On Saturday, Abdullah’s campaign, in a statement, asked all of its observers to avoid attending the vote recounting process in all provinces, in order to defend the people’s clean votes. In response to Abdullah’s demands, Mirza Mohammad Haqparast, a spokesman for the IEC said Sunday that the presidential candidates must strain patience until IEC ensure transparency and justice is served for everyone. Reacting to the position of Stability and Partnership electoral team, Amrullah Saleh, the running-mate of President Ghani said his rival team has started a blame game and called on the IEC to implement justice. Saleh reasons that Abdullah had a key role in appointing IEC officials, but now stands against their decision. IEC officially launched the recounting process of suspicious votes on Saturday. Electoral campaigns of three presidential candidates, including Abdullah Abdullah, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and Rahmatullah Nabil, boycotted the process. Despite Taliban’s repeated threats, Afghan presidential election was held on September 28 across the country. The Election Commission has failed to announce the preliminary results so far. The preliminary result was scheduled to be announced on October 19 but it didn’t happened due to technical problems with vote transferring. Recently, IEC officially announced November 14 as the new date for preliminary results.
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