68pc people want neutral person as President: Survey

More than 68 per cent people want to see a neutral person taking over as President of Bangladesh against nearly 29 per cent people’s aspiration for a partisan person for the head of the country. Besides, about 83 per cent said they want the president to be elected through public vote while only 13 per cent supported the existing system of MPs electing the president in the p.

An opinion survey of the electoral system reform commission revealed this. The commission conducted the survey through the Bangladesh Bureau of Survey (BBS) to prepare their report on electoral system reform.

BBS ran the survey between 20 and 22 December last year. The draft report has already been published.

The survey report shows almost 65 per cent supported the idea of holding the local government elections before the next parliamentary elections.

The BBS report says the data was collected from 46,080 adult people from the same number of households through a sampling method.

The electoral system reform commission handed over its report to chief adviser Dr Muhammad Yunus on 15 January. A summary of the recommendations has also been published for the media and the people.

The report proposed a neutral person be made the president. However, it left out the demand for direct voting to elect the president.

Instead, the proposal said the president would be elected through the direct voting of the MPs from both the houses of parliament and people’s representatives of local government organisations.

The survey also sought for people’s perception regarding the president’s political affiliation.

Some 28.57 per cent of the respondents went for partisan persons while 68.28 per cent want a neutral person to be the president of the country. Some 2.39 per cent of the respondents said they do not know about this while less than 1 per cent people did not show any interest to answer the question.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, electoral system reform commission chief Badiul Alam Majumder said this survey was conducted to asses the public perception on election and other issues as popular opinion is very important in democracy.

He further said they have prepared the recommendations based on their experience and acumen.

Badiul Alam Majumder stated that they made recommendations in such a way that ensures a neutral and respected person who has a reputation and garnered a positive attitude of the society to be the president of the country.

Badiul Alam further stated that although majority of the respondents went for president election through direct votes people, this was not in their recommendation as direct voting would make the government presidential.

Considering everything, the reform commission recommended the president be elected through voting of wider people’s representatives.

It was asked in the survey - who is primarily responsible for stopping nomination-trading? There was a scope to choose an answer from four options. Some 47.82 per cent said the responsibility lies with the political parties and the candidates while 44.57 hold the common0 people responsible for this. Besides, 6.73 per cent respondents said they “don’t know” the answer to the question while 0.87 per cent said they were not interested to answer.

In the BBS survey, some 47 per cent respondents opined in favour of appointing the election commission officials as returning officers during the voting while 44 per cent said about appointing the DCs as returning officers.

Over 78 per cent people gave their opinions on organising re-election if less than 50 per cent ballot is cast in any constituency in the parliamentary election. Some 17 per cent people, however, opined against this.

The reform commission recommended that re-election be organised if less than 40 per cent ballot is cast.

Some 78 per cent of people opined for a new polls with exclusion of the defeated candidates if ‘no’ votes win the election for the first time while 17 per cent were against it .The reform commission included it in their recommendations.

Seventy-four per cent of the respondents opined for raising the number of reserved seats for women to 100 and direct voting for them from the respective constituencies while about 20 per cent were against it.

According to the survey findings, 63 per cent of respondents did not support student organisations’ partisan with political parties while 31 per cent supported it and five per cent said they are unaware of the matter.

Fifty per cent of the respondents did not support foreign units of political parties while 42 per cent backed it. Some 87 per cent opined for introducing an electronic voting system for expatriates on trial basis.

About 70 per cent opined for holding local government elections neutrally while 28 per cent supported elections with party symbols and the remaining ones either had no responses or ‘did not know’ the matter.

A total of 64.97 per cent of the respondents opined for holding elections at all levels of local government before conducting the national elections within the tenure of the current interim government while 29 per cent were against it. The commission also added those to their recommendations.

* The report, originally published in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo, has been rewritten for the English edition by Shameem Reza and Hasanul Banna