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...

As the mainstream political parties have been engaged in endless squabbling on how the next general election can be a credibly fair and inclusive one, our law minister, Anisul Huq, has informed Jatiya Sangsad that the Election Commission has already formulated its work plan to make the upcoming national election “transparent, impartial, fair, free and peaceful.” The law minister further said that the EC wants to ensure equal opportunities for all parties in the elections and ensure that no government agency files any case to harass anyone. He informed the lawmakers that the EC has finalised an 11-point decisions for the next election.      The decisions he listed are nothing special or unique. The only one that’s probably new is the move to appoint more qualified officials from the EC as returning officers. Other decisions - such as preventing attacks on candidates, their supporters, houses and business establishments and taking swift action as per law if such a thin...

  The recent image of a Jubo League leader carrying a ballot unit panel of an electronic voting machine (EVM) after snatching it during a by-poll in Chattogram’s Boalkhali upazila is the latest addition to a growing list of examples as to why EVMs may not be suitable for conducting a free and fair election in Bangladesh. Neither the assistant presiding officer nor the on-duty members of the law enforcement agencies were able to prevent the mighty Jubo League’s union level leader Nirmalendu Dey Sumon from taking the EVM ballot unit panel away.  They were unable to recover it either; Awami League’s union President Ratan Chowdhury recovered the panel and returned it to the polling centre.  This incident occurred only a few days after Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Kazi Habibul Awal said no one has yet made a sound and objective complaint about the use of EVMs and the commission has taken a stand in favour of EVMs after conducting several tests. Would the CEC now, at the l...

Awami League (AL) General Secretary Obaidul Quader has described the just concluded by-elections to six constituencies as” free and fair” and “a win for the democracy in Bangladesh.” Addressing a party meeting in Dhaka’s Jatrabari, he said who won and who lost in the by-polls was not the main issue. "It was important whether the by-elections were held in a free and fair manner or not," he added. His portrayal of the by-polls tells us what kind of general election we should be expecting.  There’s no surprise in the results, except one, as the ruling alliance had it all settled in terms of sharing those six seats left vacant by the BNP as part of their anti-government movement. The lone loser is from the Workers Party, an important ally of the Awami League who lost to the nominee of Jatiya Party, another partner of the 2018 seat-sharing coalition. Workers Party nominee Yasin Ali’s loss might be the result of not getting enough administrative favour as a consequence of the party...

The rude disobedience shown by the field-level administrators – deputy commissioners (DCs) and superintendents of police (SPs) – to the current Election Commission (EC) has once again shown us what’s wrong at the core of our election management mechanism. On the one hand, it shows that civil bureaucracy is now out of control due to the politicisation of the institution and their lack of accountability. On the other, it exposes the receding authority of a constitutional body. The faltering EC’s struggle to earn public confidence has just gotten even harder. Despite Election Commissioner Rashida Sultana’s bold attempt to brush aside the civil servants’ grievous misconduct by describing the incident to Deutsche Welle (DW) Bangla as a “simple misunderstanding,” the nature of the friction between the EC and the returning officers during an ongoing electoral process should not be allowed to be swept under the carpet. Though the meeting was held on camera, the description of the untoward inci...

Did you know that mind-reading was an essential trait for the job of an election commissioner? I did not. But, now we know it since one of our election commissioners, Md Alamgir has said that those who are opposing the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs), in the upcoming general election do have faith in the EVMs in their hearts. He also claimed that 120 million voters have faith in the EVMs. Who, other than a mind reader or an expert in public psychology, can be so certain that the opponents of EVMs, in fact, are not telling the truth, or at the least not revealing what they really think or believe?  Election Commissioner Alamgir has experience in election management since the introduction of EVMs, the most controversial voting tool in the country, as he worked at the Election Commission on deputation from the civil service. He first came into media limelight in 2020, when he as the Secretary at the Election Commission, set a new precedent by telling journalists that returnin...

The sudden approval of a draft election commission law by the cabinet certainly gives the government and the ruling party a powerful public relation tool, as they can claim they have done what no other party even attempted in the last 50 years. Why wouldn't they? It was, after all, portrayed by some eminent civil society voices as the most important necessity to restore trust in our election management system.  Quite a good number of political parties also demanded a legal instrument for formation of the next Election Commission. However, it has to be noted here that most of these parties either have been or still are in partnership with the Awami League. And, regrettably, these parties have never raised any urgency for such a law before in their 13-year-long partnership in running the country. It seems that they have regained their conscience only after the outside world - the Biden administration, in particular - started exerting visible pressure for restoration of democracy in B...

It seems that some of us are quite intrigued by the results of the Union Parishad (UP) elections that show official nominees of the ruling party, Awami League, having lost in a big way. According to Prothom Alo, AL nominees’ percentage of losing the electoral battle gradually went up from 24 per cent in the first phase to 49 per cent in the fourth phase. Many critics of the government see it as a sign of serious erosion of popular support to the ruling party.  The fact, however, remains that most of the winners are so-called rebels of the AL and these elections were not a direct contest with AL’s main rival, the Bangladesh nationalist party (BNP), as the latter boycotted these elections. The Information Minister, Hasan Mahmud is right to point out the rebels' win is also AL’s win. However, his assertion that the Awami League is the only alternative to the Awami League is quite a different and much more serious issue. It raises a whole range of critical questions, including whether ...