Prospect for fair election in Bangladesh

Exercising adult franchise

Democracy Watch (International) defines fair elections as: "Elections in which great care is taken to prevent any explicit or hidden structural bias towards any one candidate, aside from those beneficial biases that naturally result from an electorate that is equally well informed about the various assets and liabilities of each candidate." This has been more formally stated by Chief Justice Murray Gleeson of the Australian High Court as follows: "The democratic and lawful means of securing change, if change be necessary, is an expression of the will of an informed electorate."

The crucial factor in conducting a free and fair election in Bangladesh is the credibility of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) who is entrusted with this sacred task. But the CEC's credibility has already been undermined in a series of events. The decision of engaging the Gram Sarkar for preparation of fresh voter list has however, been rescinded under severe public criticism. But reacting to a news item published in the press on the appointment of 150 JCD activists and relatives of the BNP leaders as Upazila Election Officers, the CEC said that the whole process of appointment has been done following the rules and regulations. The moral support of the CEC to such an outrageous partisan move, has contributed to lowering of public confidence in him. The CEC is oath bound to be neutral for holding free and fair election and the EC is one such institution that has the onerous responsibility of conducting a credible election. But gradual politicization of the EC has created suspicion and misgiving in the public minds about its ability to hold free and fair national elections.

Justice MA Aziz, immediately after his taking over as the CEC took a controversial initiative to hold a series of dialogues on the voter list with as many as 99 political parties and alliance. The main opposition Awami League rejected the invitation of the CEC to participate in the dialogue and also questioned the sincerity of the CEC's initiative. But the initiative of the CEC produced no result, leaving serious disagreement between the EC and the political parties over the voter list. Before her departure for Saudi Arabia on January 4, Sheikh Hasina accused the CEC and his Secretary of hatching a conspiracy to drop Awami League supporters and minority people from the voter list being prepared by the cadres of BNP and Shibir. She alleged that Tk 164 crore would be misappropriated in the name of preparing a fresh voter roll. Awami League leader Abdur Razzak also said on January 5 that neutral election is not possible under this CEC.

The European Union (EU) envoys in Dhaka have already termed the next parliamentary election crucial for Bangladesh's democracy. The government declined to permit the Tuesday Group, a group of foreign diplomats in Bangladesh, to arrange a conference on International Electoral Best Practices, saying that such move would amount to interference in the internal affairs of the country. Disappointed by the government's "no" to their plan for holding an international conference, the Tuesday Group postponed its conference that was scheduled to be held in November. The group comprising the ambassadors and high commissioners stationed in Bangladesh from Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and the European Commission, and the resident coordinator of the United Nations, has long been hoping to hold the international conference in Dhaka. But the government said it did not recognize any group called the Tuesday Group and warned the foreign diplomats not to proceed with their plan.

A general election has a greater significance in our parliamentary form of democracy, where political affiliation pervades all spheres of life. In the prevailing political culture, it is next to impossible for somebody to secure any business contract or similar such facilities without being a part of the ruling coterie. The cohesion of easy got money with political power has contributed to rigging of elections which happened so often in the past. Unfortunately, the rigging of elections in Bangladesh is still pervasive. It is only the indomitable spirit of the people that has prevented the avalanche of rigged elections from engulfing the democracy.

When the major political parties including the ruling BNP and the main opposition Awami League started fuelling their election machineries to become sure to win the next national election scheduled for early 2007, the ill-motivated action of the government appointing 150 JCD activists and relatives of the BNP leaders has created a crisis for holding a free and fair election with participation of all political parties. The Awami League President Sheikh Hasina already said that the BNP-led alliance government has taken all out preparation for election engineering: "The government by appointing the Jatiyatabadi Chhartra Dal (JCD) leaders and activists as Upazila Election Officers has finalized the blueprint to capture the results of the next general election." The alleged appointment of JCD activists to about 150 posts of Upazila Election Officers (UEOs) out of 300, has raised the question of gross violation of recruitment process in the Public Service Commission (PSC). Of them, 80 are activists of Dhaka University unit of JCD and others are of Chittagong, Rajshahi, Islamic, and Shahjalal University.

The EC has been passing through a virtual deadlock for more than five months due to a war of nerves between the CEC and the two other commissioners on the issue of voter list preparation. CEC's unilateral move to prepare a fresh voter list from January1 has already been met with a High Court order. The High Court bench of the Supreme Court on January 4 ordered the EC to update the existing voter list with necessary additions and omission. The court disposed of two writ petitions challenging the CEC's unilateral decision to prepare a fresh voter list. According to media reports, the EC Secretariat has enthusiastically been continuing their works, ignoring High Court directives to revise the existing roll. Besides, the CEC did not consult the other two election commissioners on the developments following the High Court directives. In fact, the CEC has messed up every thing once again after coming up with a ray of hope following the High Court verdict. The controversial role of the CEC and the obvious absence of openness in the workings of the EC have raised some grave questions in the public mind about its sincerity. The CEC holding the constitutional responsibility, has also failed in demonstrating enough guts and respect to democratic norms for holding a free and fair election.

Bangladesh, a country already plunged into enormous economic, militancy and political problems, is now likely to face the challenge of holding next parliamentary election, free and fair with participation of all political parties. The mainstream opposition parties are now contemplating to boycott the election, as according to them, the government is set to engineer election results.

In fact, the BNP-led ruling alliance and the main opposition Awami League and its allies are poles apart on the issue of reforming the caretaker government system and electoral laws. Judging the arena of politics in the country since the last general election held in October 2001, I could not but suggest that the government should make enough room for political manoeuvre and not be handicapped in facing the main opposition.

Because the political stalemate that has been prevailing in the country for some years, now may explode into violent collision with the next general election drawing nearer, which will inevitably impact on the democracy. The nation would not like to face another volatile situation similar to the one it faced on February 15, 1996.

ANM Nurul Haque is a banker