Funding shortfall may postpone autumn polls

Faced with a shortfall of millions of dollars, Afghanistan’s upcoming parliamentary elections slated for September may be postponed unless donors take action now, the United Nations warned on Monday. "UNAMA [The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan] is concerned about the US $31 million shortfall in funding for Afghanistan's upcoming elections," Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the UN special envoy in Afghanistan, said in the capital Kabul. "This is worrying, less than seven weeks away from the elections. If these funds do not become available very shortly it will hamper essential preparatory work such as voter education, the establishment of thousands of polling facilities and the hiring of over 140,000 polling staff," Edwards said, warning of a possible postponement in the elections. According to UNAMA, the total cost of the preparations and holding of parliamentary elections in Afghanistan is estimated at $149 million. The electoral bodies have received more than a $100 million, with another $31 yet to be pledged and dispersed. Up to 6,000 Afghans have registered to stand in the legislature and provincial council elections slated for the 18 September polls. According to the UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), of the 2,900 people registered to run for the 249-seat Wolesi Jerga [lower house], nearly 350 were women. Afghan electoral law requires that at least 68 seats in the general assembly be reserved for women. Monday's warning happens at a time when 40 million ballots for the Wolesi Jerga and provincial council elections were being printed outside the county to be delivered to polling stations across Afghanistan in the next three weeks. Ballot production follows a massive national civic education campaign run by the JEMB. Since the beginning of May, 4 million posters, 7 million pamphlets and 1 million stickers about the general assembly and provincial council elections have been distributed across the Central Asian state. The JEMB has also deployed nearly 2,000 civic educators to help raise awareness of the elections. The parliamentary election date has already been put back at least twice. The parliamentary polls were originally scheduled directly after the presidential election in October 2004, but were postponed due to poor security, lack of administrative capacity and slow progress on a census of the country's population. But analysts believe a further postponement would endanger holding the democratic parliamentary elections in 2005 due to colder weather conditions. "We urge the donor governments to reaffirm their commitment to the September elections by acting to address this problem as rapidly as possible," Edwards reiterated.