Editorial Desk :
A recent survey by United States-based International Research Institute (IRI) found that despite a continuing partisan divide on electoral issues, the ruling Awami League government gained support among a majority of Bangladeshi respondents.
IRI claims to encourage democracy in places where it is absent, helps democracy to become more effective when it is in danger. But in the report it has no expertise how to make democracy strong or why democracy is facing crisis. Whether government is popular, or how much powerful cannot be the subject of a study on democracy. We leave it for our readers to judge what kind of a survey on democracy the report of IRI is.
We are disappointed to observe that some NGOs are doing good business of democracy while not knowing how to build democracy or what democracy means. A government can be popular without being a democracy. We have highly educated people to know what democracy is and why democracy is not functioning. The survey of IRI did not discuss
about the democratic institutions and how crippled those have become in Bangladesh under wrong leadership over the last 42 years or so.
The report is an insult in the sense that our people do not know how popular their government is? They need to be told. We publish the full report below for our readers to weigh and judge its credibility.
The report says that poll results also indicated positive public feelings about Bangladesh’s current economic position and optimism about both the respondents’ and the country’s economic futures.
However, survey respondents cited corruption as their dominant concern. Despite that, support for the ruling government and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reached 66 and 67 percent respectively in the 18 months following Bangladesh’s parliamentary elections on January 5, 2014.
Bangladeshis were increasingly optimistic about the prospects for the country, with 62 percent of respondents indicating they believed the country was headed in the right direction (up from 56 percent in a September 2014 IRI survey).
Furthermore, 72 percent rated overall economic conditions positively, 68 percent felt security conditions were good in Bangladesh, and 64 percent were positive regarding Bangladesh’s political stability. The effects of the January 2014 elections were evident in the persistence of a sharp division regarding new elections – respondents were almost equally divided when asked about when they would like the next national elections to occur.
Forty-three percent of respondents in the survey indicated a desire for new elections to be held immediately, similar to an IRI survey conducted in September 2014, when 40 percent stated they wanted immediate elections. Forty percent wanted the current parliament to fulfill its term, down slightly from 45 percent of respondents in September 2014.
With the decline of electoral violence and daily hartals, 24 percent of Bangladeshis cited corruption as the most important problem facing the country, nearly 10 points higher than political instability (16 percent) and security (15 percent), which were cited as the second and third most important problems facing Bangladesh.
Though the government received positive marks on the whole, 47 percent of respondents do not see the Government as fully engaged in or capable of fighting corruption. Eleven percent of respondents said they had paid a bribe; more than half said they had paid at least 5,000 Bangladeshi taka (approximately $65).
One-third of those who acknowledged making payments had paid the police or courts to obtain justice, 29 percent had done so for a license or permit and 25 percent had paid for job consideration. These are among the findings of the latest IRI survey in Bangladesh, based on face-to-face interviews conducted with a randomly selected sample of 2,550 voting aged adults from May 23 – June 10, 2015.
Conducted in cooperation with international research firm Global Strategic Partners, the nationally representative sample was drawn from all 64 districts in the seven divisions of Bangladesh.
It is the assertion of the NGO that their margin of error for the aggregate sample does not exceed plus or minus two percent at the midrange with a confidence level of 95 percent. IRI has conducted surveys in Bangladesh since 2008 to inform elections and civil society stakeholders on key electoral issues.
It is a shame for us that we have conveyed the image that we are so deaf, blind and ignorant, that we have to learn from outsiders what our people think about the performance of the government or what they think about corruption.
We do not find any international quality in this American based IRI report. But let our readers form their own assessment.
Many of our educated ones have failed to make their presence felt in the affairs our country, so the outsiders feel free to show their “wisdom” in our affairs.
A recent survey by United States-based International Research Institute (IRI) found that despite a continuing partisan divide on electoral issues, the ruling Awami League government gained support among a majority of Bangladeshi respondents.
IRI claims to encourage democracy in places where it is absent, helps democracy to become more effective when it is in danger. But in the report it has no expertise how to make democracy strong or why democracy is facing crisis. Whether government is popular, or how much powerful cannot be the subject of a study on democracy. We leave it for our readers to judge what kind of a survey on democracy the report of IRI is.
We are disappointed to observe that some NGOs are doing good business of democracy while not knowing how to build democracy or what democracy means. A government can be popular without being a democracy. We have highly educated people to know what democracy is and why democracy is not functioning. The survey of IRI did not discuss
about the democratic institutions and how crippled those have become in Bangladesh under wrong leadership over the last 42 years or so.
The report is an insult in the sense that our people do not know how popular their government is? They need to be told. We publish the full report below for our readers to weigh and judge its credibility.
The report says that poll results also indicated positive public feelings about Bangladesh’s current economic position and optimism about both the respondents’ and the country’s economic futures.
However, survey respondents cited corruption as their dominant concern. Despite that, support for the ruling government and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reached 66 and 67 percent respectively in the 18 months following Bangladesh’s parliamentary elections on January 5, 2014.
Bangladeshis were increasingly optimistic about the prospects for the country, with 62 percent of respondents indicating they believed the country was headed in the right direction (up from 56 percent in a September 2014 IRI survey).
Furthermore, 72 percent rated overall economic conditions positively, 68 percent felt security conditions were good in Bangladesh, and 64 percent were positive regarding Bangladesh’s political stability. The effects of the January 2014 elections were evident in the persistence of a sharp division regarding new elections – respondents were almost equally divided when asked about when they would like the next national elections to occur.
Forty-three percent of respondents in the survey indicated a desire for new elections to be held immediately, similar to an IRI survey conducted in September 2014, when 40 percent stated they wanted immediate elections. Forty percent wanted the current parliament to fulfill its term, down slightly from 45 percent of respondents in September 2014.
With the decline of electoral violence and daily hartals, 24 percent of Bangladeshis cited corruption as the most important problem facing the country, nearly 10 points higher than political instability (16 percent) and security (15 percent), which were cited as the second and third most important problems facing Bangladesh.
Though the government received positive marks on the whole, 47 percent of respondents do not see the Government as fully engaged in or capable of fighting corruption. Eleven percent of respondents said they had paid a bribe; more than half said they had paid at least 5,000 Bangladeshi taka (approximately $65).
One-third of those who acknowledged making payments had paid the police or courts to obtain justice, 29 percent had done so for a license or permit and 25 percent had paid for job consideration. These are among the findings of the latest IRI survey in Bangladesh, based on face-to-face interviews conducted with a randomly selected sample of 2,550 voting aged adults from May 23 – June 10, 2015.
Conducted in cooperation with international research firm Global Strategic Partners, the nationally representative sample was drawn from all 64 districts in the seven divisions of Bangladesh.
It is the assertion of the NGO that their margin of error for the aggregate sample does not exceed plus or minus two percent at the midrange with a confidence level of 95 percent. IRI has conducted surveys in Bangladesh since 2008 to inform elections and civil society stakeholders on key electoral issues.
It is a shame for us that we have conveyed the image that we are so deaf, blind and ignorant, that we have to learn from outsiders what our people think about the performance of the government or what they think about corruption.
We do not find any international quality in this American based IRI report. But let our readers form their own assessment.
Many of our educated ones have failed to make their presence felt in the affairs our country, so the outsiders feel free to show their “wisdom” in our affairs.
