Most of us now know a term “gayebi mamla” which is used to describe fake or fictitious cases filed against opposition activists, including leading politicians. For nearly a decade, police have been using this tactic to deter activists taking part in anti-government politics, by lodging false cases for incidents of violence, use of explosives, and so on. Subsequent media investigation usually reveals that no such incident ever took place on the given date, time, and place. There are a number of reported cases in which the accused include people who died years ago, or were living in another country when the alleged incident happened.  Now our Election Commission seems to be following a same path. It has selected some organisations for the purpose of election observation which exist only on paper. A recent  investigation by Prothom Alo has revealed that a number of those organisations stopped functioning years ago. Its investigation into 32 out of the 68 organisations se...