Polling Day – Afghan Presidential Election in Iran and Pakistan
10 October 2004
Hundreds of thousands of Afghans, living in Pakistan and Iran, went to the polls yesterday to take part in their country’s first democratic election.
Mr Peter Erben, the Director of the IOM Out of Country Registration and Voting (OCRV) program, which is organising the election in Pakistan and Iran on behalf of UNAMA and the Afghan JEMB, said that indications are that the overall turn-out was very satisfactory.
There were queues at many Polling Centres throughout the day in all of the seven provinces in Iran where the out of country voting took place. Some Centres in Iran remained open for another hour after 16:00 hrs as voters queued by closing time were allowed to vote. With the majority of the stations having submitted preliminary reports, the projected turn-out for Iran is 260,000 voters.
In Pakistan, the projected total turn-out figure is 583,000 which equates to 79% turn-out of the 738,000 total number of registrants.
“Throughout this entire process Afghans in Pakistan and Iran have shown enormous enthusiasm,” Mr Erben said. “Despite some threats in the period leading up to the vote, they have exercised their right to vote and shown that they want democracy”.
In Iran, polling was conducted smoothly as planned and there were no reports of any major problems. Iranian authorities coordinated closely with IOM-OCRV throughout the day and police assistance was consistently good.
At the close of the voting yesterday, all the sealed ballot boxes, along with sensitive materials such as voter lists and unused ballots were moved to secure central locations with election officials and armed escorts accompanying the material all the way. The ballots will be flown to Kabul where they will be counted under strict supervision.
If in this election, one candidate fails to obtain more than 50% of the vote a run-off election will be held, probably in November, between the two candidates with the most votes.
“We are yet to finalise the figures on how many have participated yesterday in Pakistan and Iran as reports will come in throughout the evening,” Mr Erben said. “but I already believe that the voting yesterday in Pakistan and Iran has gone successfully.