Error in the new electoral arithmetic

The very first thing that startled me was that the author was predicting this result under a perceived caretaker government headed by Justice KM Hasan and Justice Aziz with his three "lieutenants" in the Election Commission and the highly politicized (pro-BNP) polling officers conducting the Election 2007.

To top it all, the same very "uniformed" people who hospitalize peaceful and composed politicians like Saber Chowdhury and Asaduzzaman Noor will act as the "atondro prohori" of the nation-wide polling centers.

In other words, Mannan Bhuiyan and Abdul Jalil are just wasting their time by conducting dialogues day after day, and by default, wasting our time too.

What the article "A New Arithmetic" didn't explain is the basis for such an astounding figure of 53 percent "undecided" voters. Referring to a survey result is not good enough. The survey result must have its causes and reasons as well. A figure of 53 percent of "undecided" voters exceeds the total number of party-based voting. Factually, a margin of undecided voters should not go beyond 20 percent.

The author rules out the possibility of "election engineering" and rigging in any election under caretaker governments (He however grants a patent right to Gen Ershad in these matters).

But it is common knowledge that the election of 2001 generated a minimum of 2 percent of additional votes through rigging and election engineering. This happened mainly due to mass transfer and postings of pro-AL administration officials of the districts and replacing them with those of pro-BNP Alliance camp.

But let bygones be bygones. Let us return to the arithmetic. Voters in the villages, the home of the majority, are highly polarized between BNP and AL camps. Hence, after deducting 2 percent of engineered/rigged votes, the net vote percentage of the BNP-JI alliance in 2001 was 45 percent, of which a maximum of 3 percent may swing outward.

It is in fact the bulk of 20 percent of new voters who have suffered the woes of mis-governance during the last five years would go against the four-party combine. Then again, the theory of polarization may divide them into 12 percent and 8 percent in favour of AL and BNP alliances respectively.

Under a reformed caretaker government and election commission, the AL alliance is expected to bag about 46.5 percent of popular votes against a reduced total of about 41 percent of four-party combine headed by BNP whose parliamentary seats may come down to a little over 100.

Experiences of the last three elections indicate that Ershad may not be as weak as the author may think. His votes are neither anti-AL nor pro-BNP -- these are exclusively Ershad votes. He can safely be counted with 20 seats, with or without any alliance.

The B Chowdhury, Col Wali, and other rebel factors, which will be visible only after the nominations are over, may cost the BNP-JI combine another 25-30 seats. So with Ershad seats and without rebel seats the four-party combine will still hover around 100 seats.

But the fact remains that the law of averages does not work in general elections. Conditionality of each parliamentary constituency is unique. Mass upsurge, election-engineering/rigging, intra-party feuds, and faulty selection of party candidates may render all calculations void.

What we all need today is a guarantee that all eligible voters will be able to vote and their votes will be counted and the results will be reflected correctly without addition of any ghost votes! To achieve this, we may think of some new ideas:

• Use transparent ballot box with engraved box number.
• Deploy observer in each polling center with a cell phone.
• Display "SMS" messages of the observers on a wide screen at the EC office.
• Assign the responsibility of poll observations to Dr Yunus and Grameen Bank.