For free and fair UP polls
If adequately
empowered and funded, UPs can render great service to the people. But the
precondition is electing
true representatives through elections that are peaceful, free and fair
After upazila elections, the Election Commission is going to hold elections of the Union Parisad (UP), the oldest tier of the local government in Bangladesh. And the first phase of this election is likely to be held at the end of March. It is expected that this time the EC would be able to overcome the shortcomings of the last upazila elections when the many candidates and parties rejected the outcomes of the elections bringing allegations of massive rigging. After defeat, the tendency to reject election results in nothing new in the country. But there were indeed visible flaws in the last upazila elections.
Prior to the holding of this election, in the campaign certain rules and norms were violated, yet the EC apparently failed to take any action against the violators. On the Election Day, it cannot be said that election was held in a peaceful manner: the agents of some parties were beaten out of the centres; and though there were long queues in the polling centres, in certain cases genuine voters found that their votes had already been cast.
Newspapers the following day printed pictures of party workers of a certain party casting wholesale ballots with ballot books in their hands. As conduction of election was not peaceful, election in one upazila completely and 50 centres of 19 Upazila Parisad was postponed. It is not that the EC does not have the necessary power or mechanism to hold a free and fair election. If the EC willed it, it could have conducted elections in the past peacefully. Therefore the EC must show sincerity in holding an election, because it is very crucial in democracy.
The EC has in principle decided to hold all the local government elections on a party basis. That is why local government elections will be from now on would be more enthusiastic and heated ones like the national elections. In the forthcoming Union Parisad election, Awami League, unlike the last upazila election, would contest in a partisan way. It is also very likely that the BNP would also float candidates without making an election alliance.
However, the Union Parishad elections hold great promise. If adequately empowered and funded, it can render great service to the people at this micro level. But the precondition for all this is electing true representatives through elections that are peaceful, free and fair.
