THE cabinet on Monday approved the draft to amend the local government laws to conduct elections to all local bodies on political partisan basis. It will also empower the government to appoint administrators at local government bodies. The move has hit the nation almost unprepared as the people were so long used to see and participate in local body polls on apolitical basis. It is true that in the UK and India parties can nominate candidates in local bodies’ polls in big towns and cities but ours standard of democracy is yet to reach the level where it is most likely that such election will not go without the government’s intervention to get ruling party candidates elected at any cost. It would just make local bodies too much politicized.
Experts are unanimous to the fact that such step would squeeze the scope of empowering the local government bodies to address local issues in consultation with the masses of diverse opinion instead of depending on the government’s directives. Such steps, if made laws, could result in new tension and cleavages in rural unity to hasten disintegration in our society. The experience of the last parliamentary elections and the two Dhaka City Corporations elections is enough where the opposition has no room to contest. Replication of such polls will not bring good to the nation.
The government in fact did not make secret of the fact that local bodies election on partisan basis is more suitable now when its control on bureaucracy is absolute. The amendments thus want to authorize elections to City Corporations, Zila, Upazila, Union Parishad and Municipalities on political party basis. The ruling party believes as reported in the media that such elected bodies would be helpful in next parliament election and in facing any challenge to the government like the one, which had brought it almost to the brink early this year. By allowing administrator in such bodies, the law would also keep the door open to replace opposition party backed winners in such polls from the post of chairman and such other positions to make unshakable the political control of the government over local and national politics.
To elect local bodies on party line is to consolidate party rule all the way down to local level. Things are progressing on the dream of one party rule.
