BD govt succumbs to opposition pressure: Voters’ list to be revised
DHAKA, Dec 5: Bangladesh's controversial election commission bowed to pressure on Tuesday and agreed to revise an electoral roll that opposition parties say is packed with 14 million ghost voters, government and US officials said.
US deputy assistant secretary for South and Central Asian affairs, John Gastright, in Dhaka for a two-day visit, said the commission would launch an intensive seven-day effort to make the list more accurate.
He did not, however, support the opposition's claims about the scale of the duplicate voters contained in the list.
“Working with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the election commission plans to target those areas that have identified the largest number of duplicates and bring down that number so we have the best available list,” he told reporters.
One of the body's election commissioners, Saiful Alam, said that officials had already begun work.
“We are trying to identify the duplicate voters ... and we will correct it,” he said.
On Saturday the NDI, a Washington-based non-profit group, said its own study found a “significant number of duplicate registrations due to migration and supplemental lists ... But no evidence of mass disenfranchisement or false names”.
Earlier, thousands of opposition supporters chanting “no election under this commission” marched to the body's offices in Dhaka to demand that it accepted sweeping reforms proposed by the country's interim government.
Police said the commission building was being guarded by thousands of officers to prevent any violence.
The main opposition Awami League party has repeatedly paralysed the country with a string of strikes, protests and blockades since the start of the year to highlight its allegations against the election commission.
It has accused the outgoing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of seeking to rig polls scheduled for Jan 21 by appointing party loyalists to key positions in the supposedly neutral commission and caretaker government.
Both bodies are in place to organise fair and credible elections in the politically polarised nation of 144 million.
Talks aimed at ending the latest opposition blockade ended with the interim government requesting that the election commission adopt a string of reforms including a review of the voter list and a review of the election schedule.
The opposition called off the blockade late Monday to allow the election commission time to deliver on the reforms.—AFP
