Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) KM Nurul Huda on Sunday urged the polls monitoring organisations not to pick any person affiliated with politics as election observer.
“You’ll have to be careful so that no person linked to politics can be appointed as election observer,” he said at the Election Commission’s dialogue with the polls monitoring organisations.
Some 30 representatives from the election monitoring organisations attended the meeting began at 11am in the city’s Nirbachon Bhaban with the CEC in the chair.
KM Nurul Huda called upon the organisations to perform the responsibility maintaining neutrality and impartiality.
He also asked the organisations to remain careful so that their monitoring activities do not hamper the vote-casting process.
At the meeting, the representatives from election monitoring organisations proposed the Election Commission to arrange training programmes for the chiefs of the organisations through the EC’s Electoral Training Institute, who will subsequently train up their respective observers.
“We’ve placed specific proposal for arrangement of training of trainers (ToT) particularly for the chiefs of election monitoring organisations through EC’s electoral training institute,” Jatiya Nirbachan Parjabekkhan Parishad (Janipop) chairman Prof Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah told reporters after the two-hour meeting.
“It will be good if the commission inform us what can be done or not during monitoring the election,” he added.
Director of Election Working Group (EWG) Dr Abdul Alim said alongside the proposal for ToT arrangement, they also asked the Commission to ensure participation of its field-level election officers at the district or upazila-level training programmes to be taken by the organisations for their election observers.
He also said the observers suggested announcing a national voter day and conducting the campaign for data collection of possible voters in certain days every year. They also recommended introducing Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) instead of ballot paper after use of the machines on pilot basis and earning public trust in these, the Director of EWG, a 29-member national coalition of civil society organisations.
Fair Election Monitoring Alliance (FEMA) president Munira Khan said they have never appointed any person affiliated with politics as observer. “During the appointment, we take written declaration that s/he has no political affiliation,” she added. She said, they asked to reduce the minimum age to 20 years from the existing 25 for being an election observer.”If we can appoint more active persons as observers, it will be more fruitful.” The EC on July 31 last started its dialogues with different stakeholders, including political parties to seek opinions over the Commission’s preparation for the 11th general election likely to be held in December, 2008.
As part of the dialogue, the EC held talks with civil society members on July 31, media persons on August 16 and 17, and 40 registered political parties from August 24 to October 19.
The Commission will also hold talks with women leaders on Monday and election experts on Tuesday.
