KABUL, 10 May 2005 — Some 800 Afghans including 109 women have registered as candidates for the country’s first post-Taleban parliamentary and council elections to be held in September, officials said yesterday.
Some 3,500 others have received information sheets and are preparing to register as candidates, a week after the joint UN-Afghan electoral commission launched the process, they said.
Between 5,000 and 10,000 candidates are expected to stand for the vote, according to the commission.
“The process as of today, is going well - we’re satisfied,” commission chairman Bismillah Bismil told reporters in Kabul.
Candidates have until May 19 to register in provincial electoral offices, Bismil said.
More than 10.5 million voters are expected to vote on Sept. 18 to elect the 249-seat lower house known as the Wolesi Jirga. At the same time they will choose provincial councils for Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
Some 600 candidates, 104 of them women, registered to run for Wolesi Jirga seats while nearly 200, including just five women, registered for the provincial council (PC) polls, he said.
