The Election Commission (EC) has failed to live up its mandate to ensure a free and fair election as BNP claimed massive irregularities in the just concluded Gazipur City Corporation (GCC) polls.
They said the EC should take the responsibility of the BNP’s claim of ‘systematic’ vote rigging as well as its failure to create a proper election atmosphere during the polls.
“Huge irregularities have reported in GCC polls. But the EC has failed to take any action against those misconducts raising the question over its credibility to hold a fair election,” Brigadier General (Retd) Sakhawat Hossain, a former Election Commissioner, told The New Nation on Wednesday.
He observed that EC also lost control over the police and local administration during the GCC polls that led to incident of vote rigging by the ruling party-men.
“It is very bad practice here that ruling parties often use their state power to rig votes. It should to be stopped for the sake of the democracy,” said Sakhawat Hossain.
Replying to a question, he said, “I advise BNP to go to the court to solve for seeking remedy over the election irregularities as EC fails to address such disputes time and again. BNP said it might take lots of time to solve the disputes. But so what? There are some records that the court had dismissed election results after irregularities were proved,” he said.
He observed that the EC also could not perform its duty properly in Khulna City Corporation polls. “It’s the duty of the EC to ensure safety of the polling agents so that they can stay in the voting centres. But it failed to do so.”
“Many allegations have brought by BNP against the polls and the EC needs to properly investigate those. “We’ve seen the EC was always silent about BNP’s allegations,” Dr Tofail Ahmed, a local government expert told The New Nation.
He suggested the EC to be more active, and strongly exercise its constitutional power in creating a level-playing field and preventing election irregulars in the upcoming three city polls.
“We saw a lot of irregularities in the GCC elections. The similar irregularities also took place in KCC polls. The EC should take adequate measures to avoid such situations. It is very bad record for democracy. The EC must take the responsibility,” Badiul Alam Majumder, a good governance campaigner and Secretary of Sushashoner Jonno Nagorik (SUJAN), told The New Nation yesterday.
He also observed the both GCC and KCC polls were marred by widespread irregularities, including vote rigging, stuffing ballots, keeping polling stations under control by ruling party men with the help of law enforcers and forcing out BNP’s polling agents of voting centres.
“The EC has failed to play a strong role to prevent all the irregularities which ultimate raised the question about the EC’s ability to hold fair polls in the country,” he added.
