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Fakhruddin argued in favor of the state of emergency in response to three separate questions on lifting the state of emergency. “One of the problems with the election process has been that money and muscle power were used in the past; in order to retain control over that, I think the emergency rules will help,” he said.
He claimed that the government received no complaints from any of the candidates in municipal elections that took place in early August this year under relaxed emergency rules.
However, the experiences of the people of Bangladesh do not match Fakhruddin’s arguments. There have been specific allegations made by various candidates and ordinary citizens who recovered counterfoils and unused ballot papers from the streets of Khulna. Stamped ballot papers of cast votes was also found on the streets of big cities like Rajshahi and Sylhet after the elections, which were shown to journalists at a press conference.
The polling agents of candidates, who were allegedly not in the good books of the government, were denied access to polling booths to perform their duties, especially during the voting hours and counting of votes. Moreover, the Election Commission failed to address abuses caused by men hired by some candidates to control voting.
In reality, neither the people nor the candidates protested in public, fearing arrest, detention and fabrication of charges under emergency laws and subsequent torture and ill treatment in the custody of armed forces, the Rapid Action Battalion and the police.
Bangladeshis have heard these allegations of manipulation by the military-controlled administration and witnessed the so-called “fairness” of the municipal election, used in arguments in favor of keeping the state of emergency in the country. It is not surprising that the government, which has no mandate to grab and stay in power, and who has already messed up the basic civil and legal institutions in Bangladesh, failed to see the manipulation and subsequent problems created by the rulers themselves.
If the government claims that the municipal elections held in August were a model of free and fair elections, then what type of election can one expect in December? What type of qualitative difference can the nation experience in the proposed general election on Dec. 18? What does Fakhruddin’s message indicate when his government freely chooses candidates they want regardless of the peoples’ choice as allegedly happened last time?
Bangladeshis have had no fundamental rights since the state of emergency has been in effect. It seems that people whose hands and legs have been chained for the past 20 months are being thrown in the sea to swim toward the coast for survival. It appears that the nation is going to have a pre-designed group of elected persons who, the people suspect, will be pre-selected by the military-controlled government for its own benefit. The disappearance of democracy in this scenario is frightening for citizens.
In the given circumstances, the government has succeeded in earning “commitments” from powerful Western nations and U.N. representatives to send election observers to Bangladesh to monitor the election even if it takes place under emergency laws. Election observers from abroad may contribute to a nation’s electoral process if they are capable enough to identify the forms of manipulation taking place in a particular society. It is not clear what role foreign election observers will play this time around.
It has been seen that the presence of foreign observers is not helpful in correcting existing faults in the election system. It only helps the incumbent authorities to validate their malpractices and failures, rather than allowing the citizens to choose their own leaders.
For example, a foreign election observer might see enthusiastic voters queued up at polling centers but fail to notice the intimidation that takes place at night to stop voters from casting their votes and supporting their candidate. Foreign observers hardly know the price that underprivileged communities end up paying for “violating the directions” of certain influential candidates.
Nobody knows whether international election observers will be able to identify the number of activists from various parties who may be illegally arrested and detained prior to the election on fabricated charges. Therefore, the competence of international observers in this respect is questionable.
Bangladeshis remain confused about the role of foreign observers, and are unable to understand how “election engineering mechanisms” of the armed forces, civil administration and the intelligence agencies function under their watchful eyes. The people do not understand why such observers declare elections, “free, fair and peaceful,” based on long queues of voters at polling centers, when booth rigging, intimidation and malpractices occur on the sidelines.
It will be no surprise if the three Ahmed’s – Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed, army chief Gen. Moeen U Ahmed and Foreign Affairs Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury – who control government propaganda, will boast to the media: “See, guys, the international community has found the election beyond any kind of manipulation. We made it under the state of emergency.”
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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.)
