KABUL (SW) – Abdullah Abdullah, chief executive and presidential candidate, has issued a decree barring the election commissions' leadership from travelling abroad.
A copy of the executive order was made available to Salam Watandar, which reads: ‘The chairman and members of election commissions, including secretariat chiefs and their deputies, are banned from leaving the country on the orders of Chief Executive of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah’.
The order by the chief executive’s office further stated: "In order to take precautionary measures, both the chairman and the members of both commissions (election and complaint), including the chiefs of the secretariats and their deputies, have until the final decision of the competent courts been put on exit control and have no right to travel abroad’’.
Fazl Ahmad Manawi, a senior member of Abdullah’s Stability and Convergence team, confirmed in a tweet that the election commissions’ leadership has been banned from travelling under Abdullah Abdullah's order. Manawi claimed that none of the embassies in Kabul issued visas to election commissions leadership and, at the end, the presidential palace has distributed political passports to them so they can travel to Turkey without a visa.
According to him, the leadership of the election commissions, after receiving a political passport from the presidency, have been banned from leaving by Abdullah in response to the ‘betrayal’ they have committed.
Official sources have not yet confirmed this.
The IEC declared Mohammad Ashraf Ghani the final winner of the election yesterday, after five months of delay in announcing the final result of the presidential election. Hours after announcement of the final results, Ghani's main rival, Abdullah, wrote on his facebook that he and his team do not accept the "fake" result. He announced himself a winner in a news conference late last night and announced the formation of ‘’inclusive government’’.
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