Fair polls requires neutral role

Law enforcement agencies and state machineries, including the administration, must play a neutral role, as should a strong Election Commission (EC), to hold free and fair elections, said a group of eminent citizens yesterday.

The need for the next general elections to be so, inclusive of all the political parties, is a matter of national significance for democracy to be strengthened, they told a roundtable “Election, Election Commission and Democracy in Bangladesh”.

The Dhaka Forum (TDF), a platform of some eminent citizens, organised the programme in the capital's Cirdap auditorium.

On the EC's reconstitution, former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda said backgrounds of the prospective CEC and election commissioners should be checked for political involvement.

Holding a free and fair election is not solely the EC's duty and cooperation from supportive institutions like law enforcement agencies, civil administration and judiciary is also important, he said.

“The Election Commission has huge powers vested on it by the electoral laws and constitution. The commission needs to exercise it for fair elections,” Huda viewed.

He also opined that the EC could comprise three members instead of the existing five. A culture had developed for governments to seek control over constitutional bodies like the Public Service Commission and EC, he said.

TDF founding member Ambassador M Serajul Islam presented a keynote paper containing some proposals over the EC's reconstitution.

It said the president should exercise his constitutional powers to form a committee, giving top priority to ensuring the members' neutrality and whose every action should be transparent, to search for eligible persons.

The committee should provide the president names of two persons eligible for the CEC post and eight others for that of election commissioners, it added.

It proposed that the CEC be a retired civil servant of any background, including the judiciary, and three of the four election commissioners be an armed forces officer, a former diplomat and a woman.

TDF President and former Bangladesh Bank governor Salehuddin Ahmed urged the media to play the role of a watchdog so that the EC was reconstituted in a transparent manner with honest and neutral persons.

Former election commissioner M Sakhawat Hussain stressed the need for a legal framework for the reconstitution.

Dilara Chowdhury, a former professor of governance and politics at Jahangirnagar University, said the rule of law and social justice must be established to strengthen democracy.

Hossain Zillur Rahman, former adviser to a caretaker government, said an accountable administrative system was one key component to holding a fair election.

Journalist Mizanur Rahman Khan viewed that a fair election solely could not ensure good governance, rather good governance could ensure a fair election.

Former ambassador Masood Aziz moderated the roundtable, attended by over a dozen retired diplomats, bureaucrats, academicians and people from other professions.