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It’s mostly AL affairs
FROM PAGE 1
Election experts have expressed concerns that lawmakers may try to influence the polls, directly and indirectly, as at least 50 relatives of AL MPs are running.
“There are chances that lawmakers will try to influence the polls. They have already established their supremacy in their respective areas. Trying to ensure absolute supremacy, they want their relatives and supporters to win the upazila elections,” said Badiul Alam Majumdar, secretary of Sushashoner Jonno Nagorik (Shujan).
There is a serious lack of festive election atmosphere as many voters do not have enough confidence in the Election Commission, he told The Daily Star yesterday.
Badiul said many voters are worried whether they will be able to cast their ballots.
Meanwhile, Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal yesterday said they took all necessary measures to ensure nobody could influence the upazila polls.
“Ministers and MPs have been stopped from influencing the elections. Some steps have been taken in this regard. We have given instructions that no intrusion into the [polling] centres should occur,” he told reporters at the EC office in the capital.
Asked whether the commission was facing problems over the participation of the relatives of some lawmakers and ministers in the polls, the CEC said, “There is no question of the EC being in a spot of bother regarding this.”
In a meeting with the EC on April 25, field-level administration and police officials expressed concern that ministers and lawmakers were trying to influence the upazila polls which might pose a serious challenge to holding the elections in a free and fair manner.
On May 5, the EC sent a letter to the parliament secretariat urging the Speaker to give special instructions to the lawmakers that they should not take part in the polls campaigns.
‘DON’T GO TO POLLING STATIONS’
BNP yesterday urged people not to go to the polling stations, reports UNB.
“The upazila polls will start tomorrow [today] and the elections will be held in four phases. We call upon all to tell their relatives, brothers and sisters not to go to the polling stations,” said BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi.
He made the comments while distributing leaflets among the pedestrians, vehicle drivers and passengers in the capital’s Banani area, containing BNP’s call to boycott the elections.
Rizvi said no one should support the “dummy elections” to the upazila parishads. “It’s a farcical and fraudulent voting. People will not participate in the polls.”
In Chattogram’s Sitakunda upazila, chairman candidate Mohiuddin Ahmed Monju, also an executive member of Chattogram north district AL, yesterday said his polling agents were threatened by the supporters of his rival candidate Ariful Alam Chowdhury.
Asked about the matter, Ariful told The Daily Star that he would talk to the newspaper later. He, however, did not answer further calls.
In Mirsarai upazila of Chattogram, Sheikh Ataur Rahman, general secretary of Chattogram north district AL, alleged that his rival Enayet Hossain Nayan, science and technology affairs secretary of the same AL unit, was trying to influence the upazila polls.
Nayan, however, refuted the allegation.
In Naryanganj Bandar upazila, chairman candidate Ataur Rahman Mukul alleged that he and his supporters came under attacks from the supporters of AL thrice during campaigning.
“Voters are eager to go to the polling centres, but the ruling party men are trying to create a fearful atmosphere in the upazila,” he said.
The EC primarily decided to hold elections in 152 upazilas in the first phase. But it withheld the elections in eight upazilas due to High Court stay orders and deaths of candidates.
Besides, there will be no elections in another five upazilas as all the chairman and vice chairman candidates in those upazilas have been elected uncontested.

Russian plot to kill Zelensky foiled: Kyiv
AFP, Kyiv
Ukraine said yesterday it had unravelled a Russian plot to assassinate senior Ukrainian political and military figures, including President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Two Ukrainian security officials were arrested for their links to the group, which had aimed to carry out high-profile killings ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration yesterday.
“The terrorist attack, which was supposed to be a gift to Putin for his inauguration, was in fact a failure of the Russian secret service,” Vasyl Maliuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said in a statement.
Kyiv says Zelensky has been targeted by Russia on multiple earlier occasions, including at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
The SBU said it had exposed a network of agents set up by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) tasked with identifying individuals close to Zelensky’s security detail who could take the Ukrainian leader hostage and kill him.
“The network, whose activities were supervised by the FSB from Moscow, included two colonels of the State Department of Protection who were leaking classified information to Russia,” the SBU said.
Ukraine’s State Department of Protection is in charge protecting the president and other senior officials and their families.
A source in Ukrainian law enforcement told AFP that the suspects were detained “a few days ago”.
“They were really highly placed men. One of them was a head of department,” the source said.
The SBU published photos of masked operatives in camouflage uniform arresting several suspects at night.
In a video posted on the SBU’s website, a man with his face blurred said his task was to “test the mood” among the presidential office’s security guards, and select someone ready to detain the president, possibly as he went to give his nightly broadcast.
The SBU said Russia also planned to eliminate Maliuk, as well as the head of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov and other officials.
Budanov was due to be assassinated before Orthodox Easter, which fell last weekend, the SBU said.
The service’s spokesman Artem Dekhtyarenko said the assassin had been promised a reward of up to $80,000.
It published video footage purportedly of an FSB handler telling an agent to surveil a house linked to a target, apparently Budanov, and text when he arrived.
“You’ll most likely hear a loud blast,” the man says, telling the agent to then use a drone to carry out a secondary strike.
The SBU published what it said were phone messages between a FSB handler and a colonel in the Ukrainian State Department of Protection, who it said personally brought drones, rounds and anti-personnel mines to Kyiv.
It also gave names of three men it said were FSB handlers working with Ukrainian moles.
Those detained are suspected of treason and preparing a “terrorist act”, punishable by life in prison.
Zelensky told The Sun in November that he had survived at least five or six assassination attempts.
Polish and Ukrainian prosecutors announced last month they had detained a man suspected of aiding a Russian plot to assassinate Zelensky.
And the SBU said last August that a woman had been arrested for over a plot to kill the Ukrainian leader by trying to uncover details of his movements outside Kyiv.