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 extraordinary assurance that no journalist will be arrested immediately under the Digital Security Act (DSA) without a summon seems to be an attractive solution to the concerns and fears created by its random abuse to suppress critical voices in the media. Law Minister Anisul Huq gave this assurance to the members of the Overseas Correspondents Association of Bangladesh (OCAB), when he said that journalists would be getting an opportunity to seek bail in court. In a significant shift in the government’s position on this controversial law, he had also acknowledged that there were incidents of misuse and abuse of the Digital Security Act. Though his sublime remarks made an eye catching headline, the legal and moral questions of such exceptionalism should not be ignored.    It should be noted that this controversial law was passed in a hurry, just before the 2018 elections, brushing aside the concerns of journalists and human rights activists. Those apprehensions of wide...