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Campaign goes haywire

Cartons filled with Tk 41.5 lakh seized in Ctg; several other BNP-Jamaat men held across country with cash to buy votes

Star Report
The worst of election scandals could not be averted after all this year either, as Chittagong police yesterday recovered a large sum of money allegedly to be used for buying votes, while quite a few people were arrested almost all over the rest of the country too on charges of attempting to buy votes and other violations of the electoral code of conduct.
Our Chittagong correspondent reported that the port city police last night spotted and confiscated
Tk41.5 lakh hidden in cartons of soybean oil cans, as it was being transported by a car. The discovery was made when the driver of the car stopped at a police check post at Andorkilla intersection.
According to law enforcers, the vehicle belongs to a man named Javed, son-in-law of Shamsul Alam, a four-party nominee in Chittagong-8 constituency also a leader of BNP The cartons were also of Shamsul Alam's oil company, Dada.
The driver, Khorshed Alam, was arrested and was undergoing interrogation at the time
of filing this report in the first hour of today. Javed and an accomplice however managed to escape.
Quoting the arrested driver, police said Javed and his accomplice were going to Baklia slum with the money.
Chittagong Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mohammad Moniruzzaman and other high officials of police visited the spot.
When contacted, candidate Shamsul Alam said, "That is not my money.” Asked why the money was being hidden in cartons of his oil company Dada, he replied those cartons can be found in many places.
"The whole affair was staged tn humiliate me before the election," he alleged.
Presiding officer of Tangail-2 poll centre of Pholdah Momtaj Uddin High School. Shafiqul Islam, was arrested by police last night after being caught red-handed while he was stamping ballot papers with the seal of the Election Commission, which he was supposed to do page by page in front of each voter today. The arrestee however said he was just trying to get were relieved of graffiti and posters on their walls, and the roads were not marred by ’decorative" campaign gates that usually lack even the basics of aesthetics.
Almost all candidates and their supporters in the capital and elsewhere in the country carried out election campaigns complying with the code of conduct with only a few reported exceptions.
Campaigning with processions and rallies ended on Saturday midnight prompting the candidates to increase their quieter mode of canvassing through individual contacts.
Over the last two weeks the campaigners also showed tolerance towards their rivals and to commuters on the streets, which used to be too much to ask before.
According to the new code of conduct, the candidates were also not allowed to bring out campaign motorcades or any other vehicular procession for thepurpose.
The organisers of processions and rallies, unlike in the past, seemed to consider commuters' comfort this year, which hopefully will keep having its influence on future election campaigns too.
The people of this country are unfortunately used to seeing ransacking of vehicles and attacks on commuters by campaigners in pre-poll processionsandrallies.
Violent street battles between supporters of rival candidates and even 'electoral killings' are nothing alien to the people, let alone the traffic jams
and corollary sufferings of the people due to those incidents.
But this year, the candidates and their supporters refrained themselves from all those. Incidents of taking down posters of rival candidates were also hardly reported.
They even largely stayed away from printing expensive coloured posters, and enumed out black and white ones instead, lines of which are still hanging from ropes over city streets, creating a festive canopy like effect.
City residents arc also not shy about vociferously welcoming the change, as they hope it is only the beginning of a much larger change to come to the body politic ofthe country.
"This is surely a positive new trend in politics," said Nyma Nargis of Mouchak in the capital.
Asaduzzaman Asad, a voter of Mirpur area in the capital, told The Daily Star that the new trend is the main reason beliind the near total absence of prepoll violence this year. ’'We never saw such decent cam-pai^ns before."
' The nicest thing this year is that the candidates are not allowed to hold rallies or bring out processions blocking move -ment of the people, which used to be a constant irritant during previous elections," said a Malibagh resident in the capital.
Instead of showing off their arrogance and a penchant for destruction, marching campaigners yielded to passing vehicles, guided by volunteers.
The people of (his country have been yearning for such a change for decades.