Thoughts on elections
Sitting thousands of miles away, watching 2 satellite television channels and reading the daily internet edition of more than 10 Bangladesh newspapers, my conclusion about the “over promised” election being organised by the military backed government is that it might not bring any positive change. Just to inform our readers, I am also educating myself on democratic values watching the full coverage of the US Presidential election process and campaign on major television networks, although I know that one would be more frustrated if one ever tries to compare the two situations. Nevertheless, it is raising our expectation to see more civil-democratic order in our country. Unfortunately, the impact of our deliberately mismanaged state affairs is just opposite. That is why I see all efforts of the EC and the government have made the general election look very “ugly”. The reasons why I say ugly are:
a. The EC is just operating like a puppet institution in the hands of the government.
b. Taking advantage of the broken political house with fears of arrest and prosecution, the EC has wittingly included the idea of local council election in the roadmap, knowing full well that the political parties have very little strength to raise any serious questions due to uncertain future of the party leaders. The EC did their homework well. Now the nation is paying the price-- the general election is becoming uncertain.
c. Only 13 local council elections are being held today. We have noticed quite a lot of activities on the part of the EC and the government to guide the election as they wanted to achieve their objective but failed.
d. Great news--5500 local and foreign observers will observe the 13 elections. Again our donor friends are physically present by proxy to demonstrate their accountability to taxpayers at home and report back.
The readers might draw their own conclusion and say what picture they see- good, bad, worse or ugly.
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