After exactly 4 years and 11 months, we saw with huge disappointment that the European Union has decided not to deploy a full-fledged election monitoring mission in Bangladesh for the coming parliamentary elections. It was  October 18, 2018,   that the then EU delegation chief in Dhaka communicated their decision to the then chief election commissioner K M Nurul Huda that they would not be sending an election observation mission. At that time the EU didn’t give any reason for its decision. It, however, said that they would send two experts with a mandate to work on the electoral process and submit their recommendations to the European Commission. Since then we have not heard anything about their visit, recommendations, and the purpose of such exercise. This time, the EU has explained the reasons behind its decision for refraining from election monitoring to the Election Commission. But there was no public announcement. According to EC Secretary Jahangir Alam, the EU decision h...