Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections to be delayed for Four Months and the new date of election will be 18th  September. Earlier the poll was scheduled to be held on 22nd May. This was announced by Fazil Manawi, a senior election commissioner and he mentioned the reason as “lack of budget, security, uncertainty and logistical challenges”.

Western nations were accusing last year’s election as marred by fraud and were pushing for reforms ahead of the parliamentary vote. This postponement now will remove a major source of friction between Hamid Karzai, the newly re-elected president of Afghan, and his Western supporters.

As announced by Election commission, Afghanistan is short of  $50m for the estimated election cost of $120m. United Nations is holding tens of millions of dollars in an account to pay for elections in Afghanistan and needed Afghanistan to carry out electoral reforms to release the funds. The four months delay will now give Afghanistan the necessary time to carry out electoral reforms.

“We encourage the Afghan government and the Independent Election Commission to set the necessary conditions for parliamentary elections that are credible, secure and inclusive” said William Crosbie, Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan.

“This would have been extremely difficult to do by the original date” , said Kai Eide, UN representative in Afghanistan as he welcomed the delay and told that the postponement will given enough time for the reforms to be carried out.