The much talked about elections to Dhaka North and South City Corporations ended yesterday amid low turnout of voters. The doubters of fair and free election under this government have to be let down.
The voters showed no faith in city corporations’ elections in which two mayors, 127 councillors, and 41 quota-allocated women councillors for North and South City Corporations in Dhaka are to be elected officially.
Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda admitting the situation said the voter turnout was “poor”. Though the Election Commission officials said that presence of voters was 30%, different media outlets and eyewitnesses reported that it was hardly 20%.
Usually, the level and type of election create a great impact on the rate of electoral participation. The electoral participation rates depend on some vital factors, such as – the type of electoral system, the social groupings to which voters belong and most of all the voters keep faith in clean election.
Witnessing the last general election, it was clear to the people that the government was going to get a big win in the City Corporation elections without voters’ participation.
The police were used in every way to ensure election victory without people’s vote. The people were denied their right to vote.
This time the people repudiated the election by officially showing 70 to 80 percent voters did not care to turn up to vote. When such huge majority does not vote then the government cannot claim victory. They voted ‘no-faith’ in the election held under this government and the Election Commission.
The government has been successful in destroying election as a public institution for legitimising the government.
Despite such massive expression of no-confidence in the mayoral elections there will be shame for those who have been shown elected by the Election Commission.
The Election Commission is not to be deterred by public criticism about its gutlessness. It also cannot deny their failure to inspire people in the meaningfulness of the election for popular participation.
The EC introduced EVM machines with built-in arrangement for programming the election results. The voters pressed the button to vote but there was no knowing that the vote was registered in support of his or her chosen candidate. Why the machines should not show the result in favour of the voters’ desired candidates after pressing of the button?
It is also found in many cases that machine was not correctly identifying the voter. Dr Kamal Hossain, the chief of Gano Forum, had to spend some half an hour to find the machines not being responsive to his thumb impression.
One can argue that machines were rejected machines not worth the money they cost. Taka around 4 thousand crore were spent on the EVM machines.
We cannot say there is no substance in the claims that the voters were fearful of violence and police action so found it not safe to go out. Undeniably some violent incidents took place though there was no such need.
All in all, the crucial reason for rejecting the election by voters is that the votes they cast will not be counted. The government will decide results in favour of their own candidates no matter how the voters voted. The people saw how the last general election was hijacked in a big way.
The shamefully low turnout of the voters will be taken in a democracy as declaring loudly no-confidence in the government and such a government should have resigned. But we have no democracy and there was need for wasting crores of taka for the fun of the election circus.
The ineffectiveness of the main opposition party BNP is a mysterious puzzle. The leadership of BNP has also to take the blame for the weakness of such a huge party contributing to the boldness of the government as well as the Election Commission. They easily get away with the lie of elections.
Many doubt about BNP’s role and competence as the biggest political opposition. It is their failure why the people did not find courage in the leadership of BNP to come out for exercising their voting right.
The mayoral election should have been taken by BNP as a challenge of strength. They had no reason to believe that the mayoral election would be free. They believed so wrongly that they will make some concessions to them. The BNP leadership, for its own silly ideas, has made the whole nation more helpless.
There is no resistance against the undemocratic politics of corruption and failures. So the government feels assured about their way of denying the people and public accountability.
Those who have been declared to have won, have also no cause for pride and joy of victory when the voters have rejected the election itself so roundly and so loudly.
