KABUL (AFP) — Afghanistan's elections authority held a lottery Thursday to allocate places on the ballot for the August presidential vote as the list of candidates was being finalised after objections and withdrawals.
The Independent Election Commission said it expected to announce the final list Saturday, a day later than scheduled.
Forty-four candidates, including President Hamid Karzai, are on the ballot but at least one has since withdrawn and three were disqualified, for reasons including links to armed groups.
The names of those who have been barred will be released Saturday but they are not expected to include the frontrunners -- Karzai and his former finance and foreign ministers, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah respectively.
Around 10 of the presidential candidates attended Thursday's draw at a Kabul hotel. Karzai was allocated 37th place while the prized first place went to a relatively unknown candidate, Haji Rahim Jan.
There will be some reshuffling of places on the ballot once it is clear how many candidates have been dropped from the final list.
The lottery system was intended to ensure candidates could not complain of favouritism in the allocation of places on the ballot, commission chief Azizullah Luddin said.
Another 3,324 people have registered for the provincial council elections, which will also be held on August 20, of whom 54 have been disqualified.
The presidential election is only the second in Afghanistan's turbulent history and a test of US-led efforts to install democracy in the destitute nation troubled by a growing Taliban-led insurgency.
Senior commission official Zakaria Barekzai told AFP that security was still the main concern despite the efforts of security forces to thwart any attacks.
Afghan and international troops have been cracking down on insurgent hotspots in operations they say have killed scores of insurgents in recent weeks.
"The second challenge is logistics because we have a poor infrastructure in the country and some remote areas are a big challenge for us," Barekzai said.
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