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An Appeal to the EC and the PM

Please do not hold Jan 5 elections

Mahfuz Anam
Why should the 5th January 'election' not beheld?
Because it violates the concept of election as envisaged in the constitution, because it will destroy whatever faith people still have in democracy, because it will cause more deaths and violence in the coming days, because it will further hurt the economy, which is already greatly damaged, because it will
further damage the image and reputation of Bangladesh as an unstable country, because more violence will significantly affect our chances of becoming an FDI destination, because further disruption will shift RMG orders from our country to others, because continued unrest will create social instability and break down law order further. Will the 5th January voter-less election solve any of the problems that we now face? Will it stop the hartals, oborodhs, the street level violence, the destruction of property? Will it stop the killings and the burning? We all know it will not. Then why go ahead with something that will solve nothing and only complicate the problem further and linger the agony of the people? Sheikh Hasina, more than many others, knows that whenever there is social unrest people blame the govern-
ment. So she has more to lose from continued unrest. She benefited from this public behaviour when she was in the opposition.
What is after all an election? Is it just a ritual that has to be performed every five years whether or not people participate in it? Is it just a constitutional requirement
FROM PACE 1
that has to be complied with regardless of whether vote rsare involved in itornot? Is it just a legal game that is to be played on the voters through which MPs are imposed on them without any chance of casting a vote?
If it is all the above then we truly have an election coming on 5th January 2014.
If, on the other hand, an election is an expression ofthe people's will, if it is a process through which voters expresstheir choice, if it is an event through which people choose a new government, if it is the process through which people approve a set of policies that they would like their new government to implement, and if it is a process through which the voters punish those who have failed to deliver, or who have been corrupt, etc., then what we are about to have on 5 th January is a travesty of everything that is remotely attributable to democracy. It is also in total violation of the meaning, intention, goal, spirit and ethos of the constitution.
Sheikh Hasina's fundamental argument for abolishing the caretaker government (CFG) was that as a"Republic" Bangladesh cannot be allowed to be governed by "unelected" people
If we accept this argument-and we do-then
naturally election becomes the most crucial process through which the new parliament, and consequentially a new government, is to be formed.
According to our Constitution, formation of a new parliament and a new government must come through a people’s verdict, exercising adult franchise and expressed through a free and fair election. This is the overriding theme throughout our Constitution.
On the other hand, our constitution does not envisage an election where a majority of the MPs are “elected" uncontested, without a single vote being cast Already 154 MPs out of 300 are uncontested. Ihe remaining 146 seats will be contested only in name. Take the case of Dinajpur where AL and Workers Party will fight for 5 seats. Since 1991 Workers Party participated in three elections and they got a total (counting all three) of 1,500 out of more 10 lac votes.
The Supreme Court judgment that Sheikh Hasina used to bring about the Fifteenth Amendment repeatedly talks about the importance of "free and fair election". Justice Khairul Bashar, the Chief Justice at that time, said that "free, fair and neutral election is without doubt a basic