Why is there no law for key EC appointments?
It may come as a shock to any observer of elections in Bangladesh that there is no specific law for appointments in the key posts of Election Commission, namely the Chief Election Commissioner and other commissioners. According to a report by The Daily Star, none of the governments in the last 49 years since the independence felt the need for such a law, despite a constitutional obligation to form one. Instead, many of these governments constituted the EC by appointing persons of their choice. In the absence of a law, the president formed a search committee in 2012 and another in 2017 for appointing CECs and other commissioners.
To be clear, even if there was a law, the decision to appoint would still rest with the president, as the constitution mandates. But the devil is in the details. Without a law laying out the rules and terms of engagement for these vital posts, there are no fixed criteria to determine their qualifications or disqualifications, if it comes to that. This makes their eligibility or lack thereof subject to interpretations, allowing dominant political parties to weigh in with their own agenda. We have often seen how such interpretations failed to reach bipartisan consensus, leading to disputed appointments based on political allegiances. The current practice of forming an ad hoc search committee, according to a constitutional expert, is "nothing but a sham". It's not an independent body, nor can it be a permanent solution going forward.
Understanding the questionable manner in which such appointments are made is important because, as past experience shows us, it marks the beginning of a trend in which the Election Commission often acts as an arm of the government, serving the interests of the party in power. All the controversies, electoral fraud and irregularities that marred the past two national elections, and numerous other local and municipal elections, conducted by the two commissions in the last nine years can be traced back to their point of origin.
We agree with experts that there can be no excuse for not having a proper law governing the appointments of CEC and other commissions. The draft law prepared by the EC in 2011 upon consultation with legal and constitution experts can form the primary basis for formulating such a law. The draft law, one may recall, had suggested that the president should appoint commissioners who are skilled, honest, righteous and neutral. Among other suggestions, it also proposed that one of the commissioners should be a woman. Such an elaborately and sensibly laid out law about the qualifying and disqualifying traits of an election commissioner is especially vital today amidst the widespread backlash over allegations of financial corruption and irregularities against the current EC, which is in its final year now. It's high time the government took the initiative to form this law to keep the office of the EC above all controversies.
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