SC stay order obstacle to right to know about polls candidates

Rights activists stage a demonstration at Shahbagh in the city yesterday protesting a Supreme Court order staying the High Court verdict that compels the Election Commission to collect and make public vital information about election candidates. PHOTO: STAR

His fellow voters, covering their mouths with black cloths, also lined up there to symbolically express that the voters' right to know information about the candidates has been undermined following the stay order.

The protesters were carrying a banner that reads 'We are deaf, we do not see and we do not need to know'. Supra (Campaign for Good Governance) organised the symbolic protest.

In May 2005, the High Court issued an order making it mandatory to make public eight kinds of information about the candidates such as educational qualification, any criminal records, candidates' profession and source of income and the status of their bank loans.

But the Supreme Court recently stayed the High Court order upon a writ petition filed by one Abu Safa.

"Every voter has the right to know about the person they are voting for," Supra Secretary Rezaul Karim Chowdhury said at the protest programme. But now the voters would be in the dark about the track records of the candidates, he added.

Other speakers said that the stay order would create an obstacle to establishing the people's right to know, thereby encouraging criminalisation of politics.

Supra also announced that it would stage such protests in 46 districts in the country from January 6, 2007.

Supra Executive Director Aminur Rashid Babul and member Rafiqul Islam and Chairman of Jago Nari Foundation Nurunnahar Merry also spoke.