The one-eyed election authorities and a festive violation

EDITORIAL

THE Election Commission on November 10 issued orders for the law enforcement agencies not to allow political parties and alliances to hold rallies and marches before the next general elections, then scheduled for December 23 and now posted for December 30. But Awami League leaders and their countless supporters streamed down in processions to collect nomination forms from the party president’s office at Dhanmondi in Dhaka. The party started selling nomination forms on November 9 and ended the sales on November 13 and all the while, the people who marched down the roads and gathered around the party president’s office brought life there to a standstill and caused severe traffic congestion in surrounding areas. The commission again on November 13 issued similar orders for the law enforcement agencies while the Awami League’s political opponent Bangladesh Nationalist Party started selling nomination forms from the party’s central office at Naya Paltan in Dhaka on November 12, meant to continue till November 16. While the commission overlooked what the Awami League did, it hardly tolerated what the BNP did, leaving a level playing field, much trumpeted by the incumbents, a martyr to the commission’s partisan whims.

The Election Commission sought to see the marches and gatherings of the incumbent political party as election-time festivity, which conveniently kept the commission and the law enforcement agencies off taking any action against the incumbent party for the violation of the electoral code of conduct, sugar-coated as festivity. When the nomination sales affairs of the Awami League ended, the commission asked the law enforcement agencies to become stringent in stopping similar ‘festivity’, laid bare as the violation of electoral code of conduct. Clashes, however, took place in front of the BNP office at Naya Paltan on Wednesday when the police charged with truncheons at marchers of BNP leaders having reached there to collect nomination forms. More than two dozen of the BNP people were injured. The commission seeks to say that demonstrations are strictly prohibited by the Representation of the People Order 1972. It is welcome that the commission started acting against electoral code violation but what is to be rued is that the commission conveniently, and wrongly, forgot to act when the incumbent political party leaders marched down the road in a similar manner. In view of this, the commission, which appears to have become one-eyed, cannot but avoid the responsibility for Wednesday’s clashes.

The Election Commission must be fair in its judgement of the behaviour of political parties by not overlooking things bad about the political incumbents while getting down heavily only on the opposition parties for the same bad things. The commission, thus, seems to be running the risk of the hitherto-viewed inclusiveness of the national elections. It must remember that it should not take it for granted that all the parties in the opposition would continue to be in the electoral fray, just because they have once agreed to, even if it plays foul with them. And if they stay off the process, it is the government and the commission that would remain responsible. The commission must be fair to take all parties on board towards the elections.

• Courtesy: New Age/ Nov 15, 2018