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Observers term polls fair

Tell of false voting, intimidation

STAFF CORRESPONDENT
Different election monitoring organisations yesterday termed the Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) polls free and fair but reported some incidents of false voting, intimidation and mismanagement.
Jatiya Nirbachon Parjobekkhon Parishad (Janipop), a nongovernment election monitoring organisation, and International Republic Institute (IRI), a US-based polls monitoring organisation, jointly presented their postelection report yesterday at the Dhaka Reporters' Unity auditorium.
By and large the election was held in a peaceful environment, Janipop Chairman Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah said.
Janipop and IRI jointly observed 210 polling stations out of a total 577 centres and found some irregularities such as false voting, slow vote casting and mismanagement in some polling centres, he said.
"Despite the strong presence of the law enforcement agencies, party mastans gathered outside the polling centres and intimidated potential opponent voters or solicited false votes," said the Janipop chairman, adding that these reveal the fact that there are some drawbacks in the present electoral process.
He, however, said these irregularities had no significant impact on the CCC election results.
The vote casting rate was very slow due to the use of the traditional system, said Itrat Amin of IRI.
In a few centres observers found ballot boxes that were not sealed at all, which is a serious violation of the electoral law, she added.
"In many centres we found long queues in front of some voting booths while many other booths in the same centres were quite empty," Amin pointed out.
Bangladesh Manobadhikar Samonnoy Parishad (BMSP), a human rights organisation, yesterday said in its post-election report that, with the exception of some isolated incidents, the CCC election was almost free and fair.
The BMSP observers inspected 55 polling centres during the elec-tion and found some incidents of mismanagement, fake voting, intimidation and violence.
"But these incidents were very sporadic and did not have any impact on the overall election results," the report said, adding, "Taking action instantly against the fake voters through mobile courts resulted in keeping the overall election situation peaceful."
The slow process of vote casting was another problem during the election that the report attributed mainly to the inefficiency of the duty officers and election staff.
The vote counting was transparent where agents of mayoral candidates got equal opportunity to take part, it added.
The law-enforcers were very active on the election day, which was the most significant aspect of the election, BMSP President AHM Noman said.
The Good Earth, another nongovernment election monitoring organisation, also termed the CCC polls fair but said they found delays in vote casting in most of the 138 polling centres they observed.