CEC opens up Pandora’s box: Rizvi

BNP’s allegation of ballot stuffing on the night before elections has been proved through the recent comments of Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda, party’s Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said today.

“The truth has started coming out of Pandora’s box. He (CEC) couldn’t hold the cat in the sack for a long time. He spoke the truth slipping his mouth,” Rizvi said in a press conference at the party’s Nayapaltan central office in Dhaka this noon.

Yesterday, CEC KM Nurul Huda said the EC was planning to use electronic voting machines to make sure that ballot boxes could not be stuffed on the night before an election.

“Your comments will remain as an important document before the nation,” Rizvi said alleging that the CEC has paved the path for ballot stuffing on the night before the December 30 national election depriving people of voting rights.

Soon after the election BNP and Jatiya Oikyafront rejected results of the December 30 national election bringing allegations of ballot stuffing, vote rigging on the night before the election.

Responding to the BNP’s allegation after the election, the CEC has said that no such irregularities took place anywhere in the December 30 national election.

Terming the CEC as the key person behind the midnight ballot stuffing in parliamentary polls, Rizvi said, “You (CEC) have plunged the country’s political future into darkness through a massive vote rigging spree.”  

“You (Huda) must be held accountable before the nation in future for such fraudulence,” the BNP leader said.

BNP and Oikyafront won only eight parliamentary constituencies in the national election. One of them, Sultan Mohammad Mansur, a suspended Gonoforum leader, took oath as the lawmaker of the 11th parliament last Thursday defying the party decision.

However, the rest seven including six MPs-elect of BNP have yet taken the oath.

Under article 67 (1) (a) of the constitution, lawmakers' seats fall vacant if they fail to take oath within 90 days from the date of the first sitting of the House.