‘Excellent’ election and observation on Khulna polls!

We are, generally speaking, amazed by excellent performances or anything extraordinarily good. And the word ‘excellent’ is also used to lavish praise on someone we want to flatter or to use. This word is used in politics too, often to resort to lies. In recent times, the use of this word has increased among bureaucrats and professionals too.

We saw this used in two instances last week - one was in the exaggerated reaction to the UN observation on the state of human rights in Bangladesh. The second instance was regarding the Khulna city corporation election. There hardly is any scope to debate the appropriateness of this adjective in either instance. We should rather look into the motives of those who have used the word.

Human rights is not the topic of today’s discussion. I will not even go into the standard of the Khulna election. The two main contestants, their parties, the election commission and the observers have given their views. It was only expected that the contestants will speak against each other. And it is almost a habit for the defeated side to accuse the authorities of rigging the election.

What is more important is an evaluation of the election commission and the observers. An impersonal analysis of them is necessary. It must also be pointed out here that though neutrality is essential for the media to be credible, there are certain persons claiming to be professional journalists who jeopardise their credibility by campaigning for a particular candidate.

However, on the whole, the role of the media was credible. Despite adversities on ground, the correspondents revealed the real picture of what was happening. But at the same time, the readers were undoubtedly confused with headlines such as ‘ruling party candidate win in peaceful voting’, only to be followed by descriptions of irregularities, false voting and polling centres being forcefully occupied.

Actually chaos and violence have become so common that it is a relief just if the election is held without any clashes and killing. Then there are allegations that while some channels televised the irregularities at the polling centres live, these videos were later dropped from the main news telecasts.

Despite all shortcomings and discrepancies, the media has revealed that, 1. The commission was obliged to halt voting in three polling centres. 2. An observer of the election commission was assaulted in a centre. 3.  The percentage of votes cast in 54 centres was abnormally higher than the average. This 10 to 30 per cent higher number of votes cast is not a matter to be overlooked. 4. The official of a centre could give no explanation of pre-sealed ballot paper in the centre. 5. Ballot boxes were stuffed with ballot papers though the ballot book had no signature or thumbprints of the voters. 6. The BNP had no agents in 80 centres. 7. Voters in a number of voting centres only went to find out that their votes has already been cast. 8. In many centres there were hardly any voters in the morning but by the afternoon over half the votes had been cast. 9. In some places the voters were forced to stamp the ballot papers in the open. 10. There were gunshots in one of the centres. 11. The election commission did nothing about the undeclared operation by the police to arrest BNP leaders and activists before the election and so the party had to resort to the High Court.

The question then is, if this election is described as ‘excellent’ despite all these discrepancies and errors, does that mean the commission is not capable of holding an election any better than this? Is this due to a lack of ability or simply an effort to please those in power?

There is also the question as to whether the commission was ever actually willing to establish its authority over the police and the administration. Or else why was it inert over police harassment of the opposition workers? The officers in charge of the voting centres expressed their helplessness on TV, revealing the fear in which they were functioning there. This fear was not just of the muscle men, but of the administration too.

The US ambassador expressed her concern over the discrepancies in this local government election. Some may dismiss this as the observations of an over-enthusiastic foreign diplomat. But before dismissing the matter, one must remember that they had seen the Dhaka North and South elections as well, and anyone would be concerned at such anomalies becoming the norm.

After the caretaker government system had been abolished as a credible election model in Bangladesh, two more models have appeared. One is the 5 January uncontested election. The other is a controlled election where the participatory election is nothing but a formality to hand victory over to the ruling party. Neither of these bode well for democracy.

The role of the election observers must also be brought up in the discussion of the Khulna election. On the night that the results were announced, their initial reaction was that the voting had been peaceful and the election was more or less fair and credible. But the next day in their official evaluation they said there were irregularities in one-third of the cases, but these discrepancies do not change the results of the election. They said their delegates observed the election in 145 centres.

According to the Election Working Group (EWG), their observers saw the voting, the condition and the counting in only 50 per cent of the centres in Khulna. So it is natural to assume that the situation in the remaining 50 per cent of the centres was the same. So if the observers saw 30 per cent irregularities, then it was the same in the other centres. They saw ballot papers being illegitimately stamped in 28 centres. So one cannot dismiss the apprehension that this occurred in the same number of other centres too where they were not present. If every centre has on average 1500 voters, then at least 75 thousand votes may probably have been falsely cast. Interestingly, the difference of votes between the winning candidate and the defeated is also about one-third. The winner secured 175,000 votes and his rival 109,000.

Another question is, do the election observation organisations still not have the capacity to observe a city corporation election? Why could they not send observers to all the centres? If there was 30 per cent discrepancies, on what basis did they so hurriedly declare the election to be fair? What was their stand about the arrests and harassment before the election? Or why they only focused on the day of the voting?

Election observation involves considerable costs. Funding the concerned organisations is a significant matter. The question naturally arises, has the government’s law which controls foreign funds created an obstacle to this? Or has the partisan stand of certain intellectuals (like the vice chancellor of a public university) influenced the election observation too? These questions need to be answered now, in preparation for the coming national election.

* Kamal Ahmed is a senior journalist. This piece has been rewritten in English by Ayesha Kabir.