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First round of upazila elections: An appraisal

A.T.M. Shamsul Huda
UPAZILA elections are very important for the democratic process of our country because upazila is one of the pillars of the local government administration. This is the election where people can directly see the impact of their votes whereas the result of the national assembly elections seem too far to them. That's why we see great enthusiasm among general people for upazila polls.
This time, upazila elections have special significance because the major opposition party and its alliance did not participate in the recent national elections to the parliament. That election was marred by very low turnout, large scale violence and violations of electoral rules. So it was a real challenge for the government and the Election Commission (EC) to hold free and fair upazila elections within one and half months. They also had to address two other important challenges: apprehension of violent attack against members of minority communities, as it happened during the 2013 national elections, and concern about safety of women voters.
Thanks to all the political parties that they decided to contest in the elections and ensured peaceful environment for voters to come and vote. It seems from various reports that the government and administration also employed satisfactory level of security measures. But there are also reports of rigging, violence and intimidation in at least 65 centres. One cannot ignore this large number of incidents. It is not an encouraging record for the EC. The EC should have taken extra precaution in these centres. Usually, the EC has a list of violence prone electorates. For example, it is known from election history that Bhola is a difficult area. So the EC usually takes special security measures in Bhola.
Upazila elections are staggered elections. The EC does not need to use all its resources, like in national assembly elections. So it can plan adequate deployment of security and polling staff. EC can quickly evaluate their performance in a round and take corrective measures for the next round. I hope the EC will review the situation of these 65 centres and ensure better security for the next round of upazila elections.
One important aspect of upazila election is that it is non-political in nature. But in reality we see that political parties have done many things that are not morally and legally right. They tried to pick candidates according to their choice. There is no problem in having many candidates because
voters usually know details about each of the candidates. They can pick good candidates from many contenders. Political parties should have stayed out of maneuvering and influencing the elections. The EC ought to have taken up the issue with the political parties and urged them to stay away.
In India, local level elections are held on political basis. If our political parties genuinely feel that local level elections should be held on political basis then the law can be changed. Without changing laws, interference in local elections is illegal and contradictory. It actually hurts our democratic institutions.
Upazila Parishads are kept powerless and dysfunctional. If the government does not empower the upazilas with adequate decision making power they will remain just as another adjunct in the administrative hierarchy. In this situation, holding upazila election will be waste of time and resources and the ultimate result will be regressive. There should be a clear division of labour between MPs and upazila chairmen so that MPs cannot dictate to or create hindrances for the chairmen.
If you see the result of the first round of upazila elections from the perspective of national politics, it is really difficult to measure the success of the major political parties. In national elections, political parties can control the number of candidates. Each party gives nomination to one candidate and other candidates of the same party have to withdraw from the election. But in upazila election, votes of a party get divided because there can be multiple candidates from one party. I remember that, in a municipal election in Bhairab, which was a stronghold of AL, AL lost because they had three candidates. But the total number of votes of the three AL candidates was more than that of the winning BNP candidate.
The writer is a former Chief Election Commissioner.