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AL working on proposals to reform interim govt, EC

Staff Correspondent
An expert committee of the main opposition Awami League (AL) is working to formulate a set of proposals to reform the caretaker government system as well as the Election Commission (EC) in order to ensure a free and credible general election under a 'non-party and neutral' interim government..
"Once the proposals are finalised, the party will make them public and launch a campaign to mobilise public opinion in their support," said an AL leader involved in the brainstorming.
Barrister Amir-ul-Islam, chairman of the AL Advisory Committee on Law Affairs, Advocate Rahmat Ali MP, Chairman of the Election Affairs Committee, and a number of legal experts, academics and former bureaucrats are involved in the process.
AL Advisory Committee member and former Dhaka University Professor Shahmsul Huda Harun will place a set of draft proposals at a roundtable styled 'Reforms of caretaker government and electoral process for fair election' in the city on Monday, sources said.
Leaders of AL's allies and other opposition parties are likely to attend the programme and table their suggestions.
The main demand of the opposition appears to be for a provision in the Caretaker Government Act ensuring that a person acceptable to all heads theinterim government.
"The main defect of the existing law on the matter is that the government can, by careful calculations and manipulations, put a man favourable to it and not neutral in office as chief adviser," said a seniorALleader.
AL leader Suranjit Sengupta expressed a similar view and said, "The government increased the service age-limit for the judges of higher courts only to have Justice KM Hasan as the head of the next caretaker government."
At a seminar on reforms of the caretaker government last week, Sengupta said the EC should have a secretariat of its own and financial autonomy.
Another senior AL leader, Tofail Ahmed, yesterday told the news agency UNB, "We are preparing our recommendations in consultation with all political parties."
He said they would neither participate in nor allow any 'mock election' like the one held on February 15, 1996.
The EC must be reformed and the next election commissioners acceptable to all, Tofail said.
He alleged that the BNP-Jamaat government is conspiring to hold a stage-managed election by appointing their own people as chief adviser to
caretaker government, chief election commissioner (CEC) and local administrators like deputy commissioners, police supers, upazila nirbahi officers and officer-in-charges of police stations.
"The president is theirs, the chief adviser and the CEC will be appointed according to their choice. In such an arranged election, BNP will be the lone party. We are not going to take part in such mock polls and will not allow that in Bangladesh," the frontline AL leader said.
Rahmat Ali said, "Articles 120 and 126 of the constitution allow amendment to the caretaker government system."
Elaborating on their stance, he said "We will propose that not only a justice but a member of other professions, like lawyers, teachers and former bureaucrats, can also be a chief of the caretaker government, and he or she must be acceptable to all and neutral."
Ali said, "Apart from the formation of the interim government, our main demand is to strengthen the Election Commission."
"Appointment, transfer, promotion and punishment of all government employees should be under the jurisdiction of the Election Commission during the three months of the interim government," he added.
In October last year, a meeting of AL Central Working Committee discussed about the caretaker government system and maintained that some reforms of the system is necessary to ensure neutrality of the interim government in conducting the next general elections slated for early 2007.
Later, Leader of the Opposition and AL President Sheikh Hasina reiterated the demands several times.
But Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and her senior cabinet colleagues including Law Minister Barrister Moudud Ahmed rejected outright the opposition's demand to amend the Caretaker GovernmentAct.