A CEC statement that very much sounds ambiguous

EDITORIAL

THE chief election commissioner’s statement of Saturday that the Election Commission is now in control of the civil administration, which includes the police administration, before the next general elections posted for December 30 is nothing extraordinary. This is a matter-of-fact statement as it is the Election Commission which generally controls, and should control, the civil administration at the time of elections. The commissioner further said that the police were not arresting any innocent people and they were only carrying out the commission’s orders. Yet the statements that the chief election commissioner made altogether constitute an admission that the commission shoulders the responsibility for all what the police are doing these days. 

A Bangladesh Nationalist Party delegation, hours after the commission had met the police high-ups on November 22, handed over a letter to the chief election commissioner saying that the police arrested at least 21 of its leaders and activists. The political party, which is the political arch-rival of the incumbent Awami League, also held the commission responsible for the death of Abu Bakkar Abu, a vice-president of the Jashore BNP unit.

Abu Bakkar, who was found dead, on November 20, afloat in the River Buriganga in an area under the Dakkhin Keraniganj police jurisdiction, had gone missing at night on November 18. 

The Jashore unit BNP leader, who came to Dhaka to collect and submit nomination form, for the first time to stand as a candidate in the national elections, was reportedly held to ransom and the family paid Tk 1,70,000 in ransom to the people who had called them, but he was not freed. The incident smacks of the like of enforced disappearance, which has continued taking place apace. The delegation held the commission responsible as the party had earlier sought the commission’s assistance in this regard. If the arrests made and the incidents of disappearances like this continue under the police that are now supervised by the Election Commission, there is hardly any scope for the commission to shrug off the responsibilities. 

Even if after the chief election commissioner’s statement, the commission wants to shrug off the responsibilities or it fails to attend to the issues adequately, it is evident that the commission is not in control of the police. Besides, what does the commission mean when it says that the police were not arresting innocent citizens? Citizens, every of them, are innocent until they are found guilty by a court of law. The commission cannot decide who are guilty of a crime and who are not.

The arrest of leaders of the parties in the opposition also harms the level playing field for all the political parties now in the electoral fray. The Election Commission, under the circumstances, must stop ordering the police to harass and arrest opposition political leaders when the national elections are at hand. Unless the commission stops this and makes the police behave, it might risk the holding of the elections.

• Courtesy: New Age /Nov 26, 2018