Editorial
Stained figure, stained choices
AL picks some bad apples
WE understand from media reports that quite a few persons with tainted record have been given nomination by the Awami League. These persons are controversial in different ways. Many of them have been involved in extortion, tender scam, land grabbing and are suspected of being involved in murder. Some of them are elected members of the parliament, and some of these godfathers have already embarked on extortion spree no sooner they got the party nomination.
When the country is in dire need of honest people in politics, when politics has become an idiom for all that is bad, it is disheartening and indeed regrettable that people with bad track record and questionable credentials are being given the space in politics. We cannot think the party high-ups in the AL are not aware of the bad name they give to the party. And there is strong resentment too against these characters at the local level, who do not want to have anything to do with such people.
And talking of the grassroots we are constrained to comment on the issue of selection of candidates. Clearly, the local party members have very little, if at all, to do with the selection and nomination of candidates. Although the RPO of 2008 stipulates that the nomination would be made from a panel selected by the grassroots party workers, this is honoured only by its breach. And with the provision of 'no vote' done away with, the voters will have no alternative but to choose from the candidates on offer and suffer them as MPs for next five years.
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