Wed 23 Jul 2008
The current election commission in Bangladesh is, in my view, the worst and most biased election commissions in the history of Bangladesh. Today, they hosted a grand voter roll completion ceremony. Guest of honor was the army chief Moeen, his personal Secretary AKA Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed and a corps of diplomats. There was no politician, not a single one ( except Gen Moeen U Ahmed). Politicians were not invited.
EC should be thanked for at least exposing who they consider their real clients are and where their allegiance is. In an ideal world, EC is there for dealing with political parties and politicians. But this SH ( Shamsul Huda, Shakhawat Hossain, Suhul Hossain) election commission does not believe in that. Their decisions are made in the military intelligence office and definitely their allegiance lies there and it is also getting clear that they don’t want the politicians to participate in the elections they plan to conduct. They don’t care what the politicians say. For them it is more important what the diplomats say. Hence diplomats instead of politicians were invited in today’s voter roll completion ceremony.
The government, the election commission and their trumpeteering media have been boasting, for months, that how many less number of voters are their in this new voter list. Inferring an easy conclusion, the message our government/EC/ media cronies want to spread is that in this 2008 voter list there are 12 million lesser voter and this means this government has prevented registration of 12 million fake voters.
Last week one political leader of southern town of Barisal, young and very popular in his community, Mr Moshiul Alam Sentu was picked up by the members of government law enforcement agencies and defense forces. Within several hours, he was shot and killed and his body was thrown street side in his locality for public viewing. It has been reported that sincce the undeclared martial law of 11 January 2007, Mr Sentu was hiding out in capital Dhaka out of fear of arrest. He was not able to go home. Like Mr sentu, there are hundreds of thousands of grassroots political leadership and activists who are living out of their locality as they are in constant fear of arrest by local law enforcement men if they go back to their locality.
Mr. Sentu was one of the 12 million less voter our ED is boasting of. Sentu could not go back to be registered as voter. Going to military camp meant risking life for him. The fact is that Sentu was not the only one citizen missing from the new voter roll. Those hundreds of thousands activists who are afraid to go back home are also missing from the new voter roll.
Additionally, there has not been any report on what percentage of rural- socially underprivileged citizens did go to the military camp set up for voter registration. And then also remained unreported is what proportion of the indigenous hill people, who are already in an uneasy relationship with the members of the armed forces, did go to the military camps to get enrolled as voters.
Before the attempted 2007 election, a strong and concerted effort was made to convince the nation that government was not ready for an election. Almost on daily basis, newspapers published stories stating the story of a remote corner of the country where many voters were not registered. TV cameras used to go to peoples’ homes and the members of the family used narrate dramatic stories on how no one ever came to their home for voter registration. As the election got nearer, a great hue and cry was started for printed voter list. Just research the print media of Bangladesh available online; you will see all these stuff. AL lead 14 party leadership, that murderer Ershad, civil society org Shujon/ CPD, some media all started the chorus, how dare you call for election schedule without ‘x’ number of printed voter list available for all the agents. And definitely we all heard, again and again and again that without participation all the major political parties, an election will never be acceptable.
Now let’s look at what happens at the present. Pro government media (These days in Bangladesh, there are hardly any anti government media) are giving daily headlines on how festive the nation is over the election. Military controlled TV outlets are starting their nightly news with elaborate and inflated images of the festive electioneering. Interestingly however, these time nobody talks about a printed voter list. We now have an election, but we do not have a printed voter list yet.
We also forgot the very premises this government is here. The premise was to ensure a fair, free and all party participated election. Isn’t this the reason 1/11 happened? And what we are having now, is it a fair, free and all participated poll? Where is our vocal minority, where is the media? Something has seriously gone wrong with this nations’ conscience.
Cross Posted in rumiahmed.wordpress.com
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
[...] Unheard Voices has a scathing post on the Bangladesh Election Commission. Posted by Neha Viswanathan Share This [...]
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:56 pm
After reading the last sentence of this M. Anam editorial, I’ve come to decision that Dr. Paul J. Goebbels was a far smarter propagandist than what grossest pieces now we have at Karwanbazar. At least people of Germany were used to believe Goebbles whereas M. Anam’s editorial has been a simple “mota dag-er kaj”. Same to previous and upcoming performances of Moti, Nayeem & Barun.
The Army is not realizing that what damage these Prothom Alo & Daily Star are doing to them. Present “blindfolded acclamation” mode of Prothom Alo and Daily Star will never last for long. We all should notice that exasperating statements by Indian High Commissioner are never published in Prothom Alo or Daily Star. BSF’s killing of two of our BDR men has been a lead news in every newspapers and other media except only and only Prothom Alo & Daily Star. All these events can sum themselves up to a body which can be a vital reason of damage of the morale of Bangladesh Army personnels.
July 24th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Is Bangladesh’s December Election Cancelled?
Not sure why it escaped attention of all Bangladeshi blogger. Wall Street Journal is saying that the planned December election in Bangladesh has been cancelled. It said in its commentary under Review and Outlook Section on 23rd July that: ‘The government has cancelled plans for a December election over the objections of the two main political parties, whose leaders have also been in and out of jail.’
Read the story here, the relevant text is on 2nd para:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121676863217075289.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
Obviously, the WSJ has got it wrong. Or is it the case that they got it right, but we haven’t heard yet the official announcement to that effect? Some one should tell the Government that the WSJ’s story has serious implication and official steps should be taken without further delay to correct the mistake in the WSJ report.
August 6th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Off late, I had been studying / following the extra-judicial killing incidents in Bangladesh conducted by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Based on last killing of some underground party leaders, I wrote few words in different forums. Recently, I had been following RAB’s activities in the local body election. What happened at a place named BARISAL was amusing to me. I talked to many of my friends in BD, some high officials and consulted many newspaper articles (Thanks to Larisha for translation in English), I have assumed the following:
1. The RAB at Barisal acted at some places injuring male and females thus created a situation to give advantage to a candidate.
2. The nature of the incident indicates RAB and some other officials acted locally and appears that understanding between the candidate and local RAB + officials had very little blessing from their head office at Dhaka.
3. There were some movement at Dhaka to bring out PDP candidate as winner; but the test case before the election commission was more to recover or establish their image before many than to support PDP.
4. Summing up the issue, I would say, there should be an investigation about RAB’s action coupled with some officials participation in changing the election scenario and result. This is needed to kill questions about election commission’s neutrality before the world and discourage RAB and law enforcing agencies becoming “Items on Sale” in future.
5. If you have any concern, write to me.
Johnfosterd@yahoo.com
August 7th, 2008 at 8:56 am
[...] Elections in Bangladesh, indeed anywhere with large population, is a hard to manage. So undoubtedly there were irregularities. The question is really about the extent of such irregularities. At least in one case, Barisal, there are serious concerns about whether irregularities bordered on affecting the voters’ verdict. And more broadly, we noted that some of Election Commission’s actions can be called shenanigans. [...]