Ballot scrutiny restarts after suspension

KABUL).

The process was halted last Tuesday due to some irregularities and mismanagement at the IEC headquarters, But IEC Spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor linked the suspension to disagreements between the teams over issues pertaining to the audit.

Noor confirmed the differences over some technical aspects of the review process had been resolved between the two camps and the recount started again in the morning.

At a news conference in Kabul, the spokesman said the audit process was ongoing in a satisfactory manner and the problems that led to suspension had been resolved.

He added of the 160 teams appointed, 80 were working in morning and as many in the afternoon shifts to scrutinise the ballots. The number of teams would increase to 200 on Friday to further accelerate the process.

Representatives of both presidential candidates expressed satisfaction with the audit resumption

A day earlier, the commission linked the suspension to training some newly added election observers to accelerate the vote audit process.

The commission had then said that there were 23,000 ballot boxes and it would take three to four weeks to audit them all.

On July 19, the recount was temporarily stopped due to misunderstandings between the two presidential candidates, but resumed within 24 hours.

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