Much-awaited polling ends
Our oft-repeated insistence in this column, and related reports, on ensuring a level playing field and the consequences of not having one, has come to be fully reflected yesterday in the polling centres all around the country. What we witnessed yesterday was entirely the result of the absence of a level playing field. Our comments today are pegged mainly on the atmospherics of the Election Day and of the preceding period leading up to December 30, while those on the results would follow later.
We wish we could say that the voting was peaceful. But a voting day that results in 18 deaths and hundreds of injured is anything but. While it was largely without any major incident in the capital city, the picture in some of the outlying areas was different. Some centres in the capital had a fairly large turnout, but the progress was slower than a snail's pace, with most of the voters having to wait for hours outside the centre. Many returned without being able to vote.
On the face of it, this was a one-sided election, a consequence of the failure of the EC and other associated agencies to ensure that all the contestant parties are dealt with even-handedly. And it was very evident during the period of campaign in the completely overwhelming presence of the ruling party in the field. Hardly any banner or poster of any opposition party was visible. Impediments were created by resorting to random arrests of BNP workers and candidates.
The blatant and starkest manifestation of an uneven state of affairs was the absence of polling agents of the opposition, mainly BNP, in most, if not almost all, of the polling centres in the country. The comment of the CEC that he could do nothing if the BNP agents did not go to the polling centres contrasts with the comments of the BNP. According to the party, it had forwarded a list of 221 agents who, according to them, were not allowed entry inside the polling stations. It is difficult to believe that a party contesting election would not send its polling agents to the centres of its own volition. It is, if at all, as much as the failure of the EC to ensure their protection as much as the BNP's for its lack of visibility in the field. And the intimidation and coercion of the police did nothing to generate confidence in its workers. It was another failure of the EC that it could not control the activities of the police, who was not even-handed in its treatment of the opposition.
Despite the apparent peaceful polls, the reports of irregularities from various polling centres, the fact that there was complete absence of BNP agents in the booths, the presence of a large number of ruling party supporters inside polling centres, the role of the police during the period leading up to the elections and, as of going to press, withdrawal of a large number of opposition candidates from the race, with one belonging to the JP(E) which is a part of the AL-led alliance, provide enough ground for a perspicacious observer to question the credibility of the election process.
The published version of this editorial stated that the number of deaths was 15. It has been since updated.
Comments