Events leading to the schedule announcement of our 12th parliamentary election appear to have eerily similar to those before the previous two much discredited and disputed elections. This time apart from serious disagreements among the most potent challengers centering the election management process, the Election Commission’s consistently inconsistent statements and decisions show it lacks the courage and capacity to act decisively and independently. Otherwise, chief election commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal’s address to the nation would not have been full of contradictions.
CEC Awal admitted that “the EC has been noticing differences among the political leadership regarding the polls, particularly on the issue of the institutional system of elections,” and that “consensus and solutions are needed,’ but announced the voting schedule without any resolution of the disputes. He then expects the nation to trust him when he said, “We believe the upcoming polls will be free and fair, impartial, participatory, and peaceful.”
He said, for a free, fair, inclusive, and festive election, there is a need for a conducive political environment, but leaves the responsibility for creating it on the parties entangled in an existential fight. He again contradicted himself when he said “- if conflict and violence take place due to differences, instability can be created, which will have a negative impact on the election process,” but in the same breath urged the people ‘to go to polling centres in festivity and exercise their voting rights freely, keeping aside all concerns, anxieties, and discomforts.’ The CEC then reminded the nation that “meaningful competition is an essential element of an election,” but didn’t explain how the next election could be meaningfully competitive without participation of the ruling party’s main challenger and several other political parties.
Such inconsistencies are nothing new. The EC has repeatedly said one thing and did something other than that, if not the opposite. A more disturbing trend has also emerged, in which we see the EC secretary cancelling out the CEC’s observations. The most recent one is the secretary Md Jahangir Alam’s assertion a week ago that a conducive environment to announce the schedule of the next general election exists,’ though the CEC in his address to the nation decried its absence and urged all parties to reach a consensus. One may wonder whether the CEC would exercise his authority over the administration and replace the secretary who is clearly out of line. Former election commissioner, late Mahbub Talukder’s book Nirbachonnama bears the testimony of how the EC secretariat served its political masters instead of the constitutional body.
Other things which have shown its inability and partisan behaviour towards the ruling party include its failure to deal with gross irregularities in local government and parliamentary by-elections, granting registration to two unknown and dubious parties, declining registrations to a number of well-known parties on shallow grounds, and entertaining discredited election observers associated with the ruling party who brought in fake foreign observers and enlisting them as local poll monitors despite earlier rejection. These events suggest the EC is either giving in to pressures from some powerful quarters, or it does not have the required skills and independence to regulate these crucial elements of a genuine election.
Ignoring substantial opposition to the holding of a one-sided election, the EC has argued that it has a constitutional obligation to hold the election in time. However, it has conveniently forgotten that it also has a constitutional obligation “to ensure effective participation of the people” (Article 11 in Part II of the constitution, under the title ‘Fundamental Principles of the State Policy’). Footnotes in the latest updated version of the constitution available on the official website of the Law Ministry reminds us that the part about “effective participation of the people” was omitted by the fourth amendment and again inserted ( following a national consensus to revert to a parliamentary system) by the 12th amendment in 1991. Should we be sacrificing effective participation of the people in the name of constitutionalism, albeit, which has been amended (by the 15th amendment) allegedly in an unconstitutional manner?
Effective participation of the people is not only a national requirement, but an international one too. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 states, “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”
On November 16, 2023, the global body representing parliamentarians of the world, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, IPU published a new tool called the Indicators for Democratic Parliaments, which offers a new approach to measuring parliamentary capacity, resilience and performance. It devised 25 indicators to evaluate parliament’s own strengths and weaknesses and one of those indicators is electoral integrity. In judging the electoral integrity it sets the criteria as such: “In practice, elections take place regularly. A significant proportion of citizens participate in these elections. Elections are competitive and citizens’ fundamental rights are respected before, during and after election day.”
Rescheduling the national election is neither impossible nor without precedence. It was rescheduled, though by seven days only, in the not too distant past, in 2018. If parties can agree on the way forward, buying some additional time for holding the election is also possible, as counting of 90 days can begin afresh if parliament is dissolved. It is true that the history of dialogue between the two arch rivals - Awami League and BNP - is an unhappy one, but there were exceptions, too, such as the 1991 amendment for returning to the parliamentary form of government.
It may sound superstitious. But, the day fixed for voting is a Sunday, the same day of the week like the last two sham elections - January 5, 2014 and December 30, 2018 - were held on. The last time people in Bangladesh freely voted was not a Sunday, but on a Monday. We need a genuine election, not another sham one.
(Published in The Daily Star on November 19, 2023.)
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