If EC does not know that dissolving parliament essential for free election, we have no hope

This time no invitation is necessary for parties to join the next election. The parties will do everything to take part in the coming election. They will force the government to take part in the election, if necessary.

That does not mean they will be found very obliging and peaceful. All the parties are determined not to give a free hand to the government this time to win the election.

The main concern of the Election Commission will be how to hold the election peacefully. Any election looses its objective if it is not peaceful.

After holding dialogues with the civil society, media and political parties, the EC is now set to initiate its final round talks with the polls observers, women leaders and election experts, likely to begin on October 22, 23 and 24 respectively. So much time has been taken, so many suggestions received by the EC. The Commission also tried to allure the political parties to take part in the election.

But the Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda had nothing to offer other than his helplessness in saying he has to conduct the election in accordance with the Constitution. That is also the claim of the government that amended the Constitution to be in charge of the state affairs during election.

By this constitutional amendment, the government wanted to make the EC redundant. So the EC has to establish its constitutional justification for organising free, fair and peaceful election. Otherwise it has no value.

The government is too happy that election victory is in their hands.

But as a constitutional body, the EC has to recognise honestly that the condition for free and fair election is not available. If it has to have some judgement to exercise about the existence of conditions for free election then it cannot parrot what the government has said.

If the CEC and others of the Commission are not more than government servants, then the Commission’s existence as an independent constitutional body for ensuring free election has no justification to exist. They will be wasting public money.

Not only that if the Commission is not satisfied about its ability to hold free election then it will be unpatriotic for the Commission to deceive the people. We have India as our next door neighbour where no parliamentary election takes place without dissolving the parliament. As the constitutional body with the responsibility of maintaining the sanctity of election, it must be able to create atmosphere for free and fair election. Nowhere under parliamentary system elections are held without dissolving the parliament. It is absurd to hold election of the parliament but seats have not been declared vacant.

Since mid August to till the date, the EC remained busy to accomplish a ‘huge action plan’ with a view to arranging the next 11th parliamentary election, scheduled to be held in December 2018, a participatory one without any dispute. In the absence of vital precondition of dissolving the parliament and declaring the seats vacant, we can ask what is the purpose of such huge action plan, the Commission can take other than justifying bluff of an election.

After holding talks, EC Acting Secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed expressed his optimism saying that the dialogues with the political parties ended “successfully”. Everyone was sincere and cooperative. The EC feels at ease after arranging the talks,” he said.

Is it true? No. The real scenario is totally different. In fact, the outcome of the dialogue is not encouraging as described by the EC official. The parties placed a large list of demands including dissolution of the parliament.
As per information available in hand, the EC has so far received a total of 531 proposals from 40 political parties in the marathon dialogue. Of them, only the AL and its allies are in favour of keeping the government in power during the election. The main opposition BNP and its partners are favouring for a non-partisan polls-time government and the parliament to be dissolved.

Most interestingly, the main opposition in Parliament Jatiya Party along with two other parties has given proposal to form a poll-time government with the parties that have representation in the parliament.

Of the 40 parties, 19 including the BNP, have favoured mobilisation of armed forces personnel during the polls. Especially, the BNP proposed giving judicial power to the army. Such a suggestion logically implies no confidence in the ability of the EC to control the situation.

We want the EC should be honest to say the government that unless the parliament is dissolved no condition for free, fair and peaceful election will be possible.