Election Day!

After scary earth quake last night, I woke up at 5:30 am and I went to a polling station in old city of Kabul. it was an old religious place belongs to Shiia people. A lot of people were waiting outside for starting time which was 7 am. Observers were waiting to see how the boxes will be locked and then note the number and do their job. Police start searching people and let them in the polling station.

First the religious old men start casting their vote and they were happy because they made their choice before. In women section i saw a burqa clad women who put her jewelery on and her hands had red color of Hena came to ballot box and casted her vote. she was happy too.

Beside all these, my colleague talked to a lady who did not know what to do. she was telling my colleague that she will vote to Karzai and we lough. Later i went to Jama'at Khana which is the holy place for Ismaili's religion. People were a bit angry. they were complaining about the ink that was washed off easily. One of the observers was told me on the phone that the ink is not the real one and i saw some one who washed off the ink to show it to the press.

People also arrested a person who wanted to vote for second time but some how people and election workers had found out. there was a long line in women section. more than 150 young girls and women were waiting on a line. Girls were with clean and beautiful clothes and i could see they were happy to participate. Younger girls even were a bit excited.

A lot of Taliban rockets also wanted to reach polling centers around the country and a lot of civilian were injured and  till now few are died. Nothing serious attack happened in Kabul yet which is 1:37 pm. We had some racket fire early morning and a land mine in south west of the city which just injured. Its not clear that why Taliban were not success to attack more.

The security check system even is lighter than Presidential Election day. A lot of people and candidates were worry about the fraud. most of them were complaining and they were telling us that fraud will happened and they are worry. I did not vote because i do not trust the system to defend my vote at all.

I will update you if some thing new happened. my job for today is not finished yet.

UPDATE

At 3:30 pm i arrived to a polling center in Dasht-e Barchi in Hazara area. A lot of angry men and women were shouting on IEC workers and complain about ruining out of the ballot papers before the elections time been over. I sow this problem in few other polling centers. People in another center were telling me that all the ballot papers were finished at 2 pm, two hours before the official time for elections to be finished.

We went to another center to cover the counting but IEC workers did not let us and they kicked us out from the centers. we start struggling with them and make them understand that what is their job and what is our responsibility, but they did not understand, observers also were in our side and when we saw that observers are getting angry, we left there.