Unwanted ‘police verification’ stands to harm elections

EDITORIAL

POLICE personnel eliciting, and trying to elicit, information, mainly political affiliation and inclination, on people — mostly teachers, bankers and officials of government, semi-government and autonomous organisations — likely to be recruited as presiding and assistant presiding officers in the national elections scheduled for December 30, as New Age reported on Sunday, seems to be worrying. 

While the Election Commission is reported not to have left any instructions with the law enforcement agencies to collect information on political disposition of probable election officers, it leaves the scope to reason that this could be an intimidation mechanism of the incumbents to influence the holding of the elections. District- and upazila-level officers have prepared list of people who could be recruited as presiding and assistant presiding officers and the lists have already been sent to the returning officers, who are deputy commissioners of the 64 districts and two divisional commissioners, so that can begin the recruitment for election duties in 40,199 polling stations, having 2,06,540 polling booths. The people listed for the probable recruitment have largely been panicked at the ‘police verification’ that they are having to face.

A high schoolteacher, who has been on election duties since 1990, for an example, says that he has never experienced such ‘verification’ and reports his colleagues having received phone calls from law enforcers. Many others are reported to have received visitors from the law enforcement agencies who have interrogated them about their political affiliations. 

While the Election Commission, which says that it has not given any such instruction for the law enforcers, has decided to discuss the issue, the police authorities seek to brush aside the incidents as mere allegations saying that it is not clear who are out to gather information on the political inclination of the probable president and assistant presiding officers. They further say that they will take action against the people gathering information on the teachers, bankers and officers without any instruction from the election authorities. The Election Commission should stringently deal with the issue as the incidents stand to harm the holding of the national elections and to tarnish the image of the commission. It should immediately order an investigation of the matter and hold to account people responsible for this after a credible investigation. Unless the commission does this, the commission will only prove its bias towards the political incumbents. It should not let the police go just by putting everything down to allegations as whoever does this does in the name of the law enforcement agencies.

Some of what the Election Commission has so far done or decided not to do — regarding the holding of marches by the incumbent political party during nomination paper sales and the reshuffle in the field administration in view of the national elections — appears to show the Election Commission’s failure in ensuring a level playing field for all parties and alliances in the electoral fray. A string of actions or decisions continued in this direction could make it uncomfortable for the parties in opposition to stay in the electoral fray. The Election Commission must act to stop such aberrations and that must happen early.

• Courtesy: New Age/ Nov 19, 2018