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New voters’ lists were prepared with photographs of the registered voters, and the Election Commission issued National Identity Cards prepared by the Bangladesh Army. The commission also announced some “reformation” of the election rules and regulations, intended to remove the influence of muscle power, black money, rigging, fake voting and other malpractices. Law enforcers, including the armed forces, had powers to summon civil administrators and to arrest any “troublemakers.”
Chief Election Commissioner Shamsul Huda termed these elections a “test case.” Any shortcomings were to be viewed as lessons for future improvement of the electoral process, before the general election. Therefore the Bangladeshis will try to evaluate the activities and performance of the Election Commission on the basis of Monday’s elections. During the campaign period a number of points were raised among the people and in the media.
First, the commission, in its Electoral Code of Conduct, had called upon people with political party affiliations or positions to give them up before taking the oath of office, if elected. This was supposed to be an attempt to depoliticize the local government elections. But the High Court on July 31 declared that the Election Commission had no constitutional authority to make such a policy. This decision was followed by allegations that the commission had already violated the Constitution and its top officials had no right to remain in their positions.
The political parties wanted to hold the general election first, rather than local elections. The High Court Division, in response to another petition, requested the government and the Election Commission to show cause within three weeks as to why the Aug. 4 elections should not be declared illegal. However, the commission ignored this demand – allegedly superseding its constitutional authority at the instruction of the military-controlled government.
This kind of chicken-or-egg debate over which body takes precedence continues in the country. People are now awaiting the judgment of the court to determine the fate of the local government bodies that were already elected on Monday.
Ever since Huda and his two commissioners took over the Election Commission, they have been talking about holding elections that would be free from various manipulations. But the reality of the campaigns in the respective jurisdictions shows a different picture. Candidates were allegedly buying votes, spending money beyond the legally stipulated amount, and distributing clothes to win the votes of the poor. The commission has remained silent concerning these practices.
Local media reported the elections, showing long queues of people at the polling centers, ignoring heavy rain and walking through muddy streets in many places. Such images gave everyone the impression that the voters were wholeheartedly interested in exercising their right to vote for the candidate of their choice.
Mistakes and mismanagement – such as misplaced photos, names and serial numbers in the voters’ lists – and inefficiency of the polling officers made the whole process slow, causing anger and fatigue among the voters. Some hundreds of voters, despite waiting for hours in hot, humid and rainy weather, left the polling stations in Rajshahi city without finding their names on the official lists, even though they had their National Identity cards.
In many places, officers failed to direct people to the proper polling booth and did not instruct them in how to cast their votes. On the one hand, Election Commission officials had told the voters that the ID card was not required in order to vote; on the other hand, the police did not allow voters in many places to enter the polling centers without the National ID Card. There were also allegations of a few false votes being cast, despite the electoral lists with photographs of the voters.
Holding credible elections in Bangladesh is always a big challenge, whether they are for local governments or Parliament. The people aspire to elect representatives that will voice their demands and choices, but their aspirations do not match the power-grabbing intentions of the feudalistic politicians, and the Election Commission does not have the competence or commitment to create a real democratic process and resolve these differences. The country’s legal institutions are incompetent to address the problems or intervene effectively, as they do not have enough strength to sustain their independence and credibility.
The incidents of people sent home without voting shows that their right to proper representation was not protected. The failure to prevent manipulation of the elections can only further damage the impaired hope of democratization. The Election Commission, constitutionally responsible for preparing the voter lists, was guilty of many mistakes and dislocations, and those responsible for maintaining law and order at the polling stations have to do more homework to ensure the credibility of future elections.
The people of Bangladesh should not always adopt a “forgive and forget” policy toward these institutions, at the cost of losing their fundamental right to select their representatives.
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(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national with a degree in literature from a university in Dhaka. He began his career as a journalist in 1990 and engaged in human rights activism at the grassroots level in his country for more than a decade. He also worked as an editor for publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues and contributed to other similar publications.)
