A newspaper report says President Abdul Hamid will start a dialogue with registered political parties next week to discuss issues relating to the reconstitution of the Election Commission (EC). The parties that have representation in Parliament will be first invited to the talks. The Jatiya Party has already been informally invited for joining talks on December 20 but the JP Secretary General has said they will decide their strategy after getting a formal invitation. We wonder why the government is avoiding the framing of a law to appoint the election commission and the president has to constitute a search committee every time an election commission completes its term. In our view such dialogue is misleading to show that party opinions were sought to nominate credible candidates. But the government candidates prevail in the end.
That is how the outgoing election commission and its chief election commissioner were selected five years ago ignoring the search committee’s recommendations. The Chief Election Commissioner was nowhere in the list of the search committee but he suddenly emerged to become the chief of the commission. As a body the election commission is being reconstituted, as alleged, to work and allow election results to ensure victory of preferred candidates. Such an election commission is destroying the election process; denying the people the right to vote and thus destroying the foundation of democracy.
Globally we are now unfortunately known as an undemocratic nation. We are afraid the said dialogue may lead to the formation of another shameless commission. We would say why the governments don’t directly appoint its political nominees on the commission instead of doing a futile dialogue. Political ally Jatiya Party is the first choice to open talks. Such a policy degrades other credible stakeholders and apparently shows the weakness of the move. We would want the president to be an arbiter to ask the government to enact a law to frame the election commission instead of going for search committees every time. It may take not more than one week for Parliament to pass such a law.
