ELECTION -- II

POLITICAL parties have the right to boycott elections. They also have the right to motivate people to side with their position. But what is unacceptable is using violence and intimidation to thwart an election. We must register our contempt at the systematic manner in which violence had been applied in yesterday's polls. We note with consternation the leading role Jamat-Shibir have taken in perpetrating violence.  
It would have served BNP's cause better if they had dispensed with violence and depended on the prudence of the voters to choose between voting and abstaining.
At the time of going to press, polls in as many as 161 polling centers in more than 30 districts have been postponed and 19 people killed in election related violence only yesterday. Polling centers had been subject to arson attacks and a large number of schools, they being normally selected as polling centers, have suffered severe damage as a result. Regrettably, election officials have been attacked and two of them succumbed to their injuries the day before the election. All this means that votes in all these centers will have to be rescheduled.
We are also surprised at the policy devised to ensure security. We wonder whether the planners downplayed the threat, the potential of which the security forces and the EC could not have missed. And were there no better ways of providing security for the election?