Afghanistan:Zalmai Rassoul a Probable Candidate for Presidency: Karzai

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President Hamid Karzai on Saturday said that

Zalmai Rassoul, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, could be a likely candidate for the Presidential election in the spring. On the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, held in Beshkik, Kyrgyzstan, President Karzai met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and said that Afghanistan would have two or three prominent candidates running for Presidency in 2014. During the course of discussion, President Karzai named Rasoul a "probable candidate" in the upcoming election. Mr. Rasoul was part of Afghan delegation at the SCO Summit. Mr. Rasoul is not openly committed to any of the major political coalitions that have formed in recent weeks. Dr. Zalmai Khalilzad, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Ali Ahmad Jalali, former Afghan Interior Minister; Ahmad Zia Masoud, the leader of the National Front Party (NFP) are all names that have circulated as likely candidates in the Presidential elections set for April 5. Although 15 Presidential candidates and over 400 candidates for the Provincial Councils have received information packets from the Independent Election Commission (IEC) this past week, the Commission urged the candidates not to register themselves merely for getting fame. The IEC asked only those people to register who are eligible to contest. "15 people came and received the information packets of the Presidential election. The number of candidates will increase if it goes on like this. We ask those who are not qualified for candidacy, to avoid coming to the Commission. Because they are wasting their time and ours as well," Noor Mohammad Noor, spokesman of the IEC told TOLOnews. Speculations have circulated that the field of Presidential candidates will be smaller in this election than it has in the past. This is said to be likely because of the new conditions for candidates to be eligible for the ballot, including the gathering of 100,000 signatures of supporters from multiple provinces around the country. The distribution of information packets for the Presidential and Provincial Councils' candidates was kicked-off by the IEC on September 9th. The officials of the IEC said that 33 people out of over 400 Provincial Council candidates, who received information packets, are women. "Among the 450 Provincial Council candidates, 33 of them are women. They also received the information packets," Mr. Noor said. On Friday, Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail, the head of the IEC Secretariat, announced that certain voter registration services would be extended past the September 26 date marking the official ending of the registration process in order to better include remote communities that have been unable to fully participate in the process thus far. Voter registration opportunities for particular rural areas will provided for another 45 additional days. In addition to the opening of more registration centres and keeping existing centres open longer, part of the IEC's efforts to make the process more inclusive will be the deploying of a mobile registration team. The team is expected to be sent out on September 28 and visit some of the most remote communities in Afghanistan. As low female turn-out still remains a serious concern for the Commission, the mobile registration team will give a special focus to encouraging and facilitating the registration of women. Part of the team's responsibilities will therefore be a voting rights and electoral process awareness campaign. So far, the IEC reports that around 11,66,944 individuals have been registered for the elections, out of which 3,26,634 are women.