IOJ against transparent ballot box

The Election Commission (EC) yesterday opened a three-month-long dialogue with political parties for finalising the draft of the electoral reform proposals in preparation for holding the general election.
On the first day, the EC sat with Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ), which lent support to an EC proposal for disbanding parties' student and overseas fronts. It also stood against using transparent ballot box for the polling.
Placing the party proposals on the table, a 10-member IOJ delegation to the meeting asked for enhancing the election-spending ceiling to TK 25 lakh from TK 5 lakh and reducing party-registration fee to TK 5,000 from TK 25,000.
Led by Secretary General Maulana Abdul Latif Nezami, the delegation of the IOJ, a partner of the immediate-past coalition government led by BNP, lent support to the EC proposal that there should be no student and foreign units of the political parties.
"Students, expatriates and different professionals can establish organisation independently and lend support to any political party, but they can't be affiliated with any," the IOJ secretary general told reporters after the meeting held in the EC conference room.
The party also suggested making the provision for 33 percent female representation on the party committees optional.
"Female representation, starting from the grassroots level to central committee, cannot be possible to be maintained for most of the parties because of the socio-cultural scenario of the country," the IOJ secretary said.
One cardinal proposal tags the condition that for getting registered with the EC the political parties should have polled least 2 percent of cast votes in the last general election, which the IOJ delegation dubbed as unnecessary.
The other registration condition is that the parties should have offices in 32 district and upazila headquarters with minimum 1,000 members in districts and 200 in upazilas, and they suggested it to be in 16 districts.
The agenda of the dialogue focussed on the Representation of People Order 1972, the Political Party Registration Rules 2001 and the Election Codes of Conduct 1996. Besides.
The members of the IOJ delegation were Senior Vice-Chairman Maulana Muhiuddin Khan, Secretary General Maulana Abdul Latif Khan Nejami and central leaders Mufti Mohammad Fayjullah, Maulana Hafiz Abdullah Mohammad Hassan and Maulana Wasel, Maulana Abdur Raqib, Maulana Mujibur Rahman, Maulana Abul Kasem, Maulana Jubaer Ahmad and Maulana Abu Bakar.
The EC delegation members were Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda, Election Commissioners M Sohul Hussain and Brig Gen (retd) M Sakhawat Hussain, secretary to the EC M Humayun Kabir and Senior Assistant Secretary of EC law Section AKM Salimullah.