Faruque Ahmed
The Election Commission once again made the mess again in elections to two city corporations in Dhaka and Chittagong city destroying whatever little faith people had left with them after the January 5 parliamentary polls.
BNP and the major opposition parties had boycotted the parliamentary election alleging that the ruling party has taken hostage of the entire election machinery and the law enforcing establishments and any election under the present government had little scope to be free and fair.
Many people from home and abroad had criticized the opposition’s decision to boycott the polls at that time but the massive fraud in mayoral election last week has again proved that the opposition was right while the government has missed a golden chance to gain some credibility.
Highly flawed polls
BNP leaders believe this flawed election again would further strengthen its demand for a caretaker government to hold the next election. Awami League leaders on the other hand said it would boost the morale of the party men who were on the edge during the recent anti-government agitation. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina claimed that the city polls were fair and it was a victory of democracy and the people. However, the people again had miserably failed to vote in the just finished city polls.
News reports said the mayoral election on April 28 saw indiscriminate rigging, intimidation and violence in an atmosphere in which ruling party men had taken control of the polling centres at most places and stuffed the ballot boxes at will driving out the opposition polling agents.
But the Election Commission and specially the Chief Election Commissioner CEC) has characterized the city polls to have taken place in a festive mood certifying it was free and fair and took place peacefully.
In fact, commentators in the media said that he did what the government wanted him to do, no matter even if it has destroyed people’s confidence in the Election Commission and the electoral system as a whole. The CEC has also largely destroyed the image of the Election Commission as an independent body while losing his own credibility as an honest broker sitting on a constitutional body.
Certifying the rigged election the EC has however showed voters turn out were at 44 percent while Election Working Group (EWG) or Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) said it was highly flawed election at all places and the voters turn out not over 20 percent. In their views, most polling centres were under the siege of the ruling party men who barred voters and polling agents of the opposition backed candidates from entering the centres.
Lawmen helped the rigging
Members of the police did not intervene when stuffing of ballot papers were being practiced in polling booths and magistrates remained mere silent spectators as nobody called in their help. The message was clear: It was the day of the ruling party men to try and win victory for their candidates.
Reports say the government deployed over 80 thousand law enforcers to guard the polling. Over 27 thousand Ansars and VDB men were deployed for election duty including several thousand volunteers hired on daily allowance basis on recommendation of the local Awami League leaders for four-day election duty. They were provided with Ansar’s jacket and wooden stick in hand to give their identity as members of law enforcement agencies.
But these members of law enforcement agencies were useful to implement the ruling party’s blue print in the polling centres; they worked to stuff ballots and held the opposition out. In another move, the EC authorized 500 volunteers of an unknown NGO to work as election monitors while BNP leaders’ complaint of their presence fearing they may have a hand in vote rigging.
What appears most striking is that despite the vote boycott by 11 AM, the opposition backed mayoral candidates scored impressive results in early hours voting.
At the end of the day Awami League backed mayor candidates Annisul Haque won in the Dhaka North by a margin of 1.35 lakh against Tabith Awal, Saeed Khokon in Dhaka South won by 2.41 lakh against Mirza Abbas and AZM Nasir Uddin in Chittagong won by 1.71 lakh votes against Manzurul Alam. It was not big margin to overcome had there been fair election.
‘Winning at any cost isn’t victory’
Many have questioned whether BNP’s decision was right to boycott the polls midway pointing out that if they had stuck to the end, they could have snatched the victory.
At the end of the poling, however it appeared that votes cast in many centres have exceeded the number of registered votes by almost 1,21,003 votes in all. Counting therefore went slow to drop these votes in a centre by centre count. But since there was no challenge from the opposition in absence of their polling agent, the entire cover up went almost unnoticed.
US ambassador Ms Barnicat has summarised the polling experience after her visits to some polling centres saying “winning at any cost is not victory.” Perhaps it was a rare disappointment to see how voting was rigged in presence of law enforcers.
British High Commissioner Robert Gibson was also shocked and disappointed like Barnicat and both of them demanded transparent and impartial investigation how it could take place. UN Secretary General Ban Ki –moon, European Union and US state Department have also called for neutral investigation.
In fact most analysts believe, what the ruling party was targeting in this city election was quite opposite to what Barnicat had said. Awami League was hungry for a big victory in the city polls to claim that people have rejected BNP for what it said its politics of violence and burning of people by throwing petrol bombs. So by capturing polling centres, it wanted to snatch the victory.
But it was so outrageous and indiscriminate without caring the presence of election monitors and media men who were also mercilessly beaten up in many cases, that the victory may have become a burden for the ruling party at the end to relish.
Source: Weekly Holiday
