DHAKA, 8 August 2005 — Apparently bogged down in legal details, the Election Commission is in a fix as to whether the voters’ list will be prepared afresh or revised for the next parliamentary elections in early 2007.
The chief election commissioner (CEC) and two other election commissioners at a two-hour meeting in Dhaka examined the legal aspects of the electoral roll. In the meeting, the EC secretariat officials were directed to assemble a dossier containing the existing electoral laws and precedents regarding the voters’ list, officials who attended the meeting said yesterday.
The meeting also discussed whether it was feasible to introduce an annual revision system of the voters’ list. The commission will sit again to decide on the roll.
Chief Election Commissioner M.A. Aziz, who recently backtracked on his earlier legal stance on the roll, hinted that a fresh list might be prepared. “There is no legal barriers in having a fresh voter list,” Aziz told reporters after the meeting. “We will follow the precedents to prepare the list,” he added. The CEC and the two commissioners — A.K. Mohammad Ali and M. Munsef Ali — had repeatedly said that the electoral ordinance would have to be amended to prepare a fresh list.
But EC documents show that the commission prepared fresh voter lists in 1983, 1990, 1995 and 2000 without any amendment to the Electoral Rolls Ordinance of 1982.
The two election commissioners want more time to examine electoral laws before taking any decision in this regard. “It will take some time to make the decision as we’ve only started examining the electoral laws,” Munsef Ali said.
The EC at the first meeting on the voter list on July 20 failed to come to a conclusion because of the commissioners’ varying legal interpretations about preparing the roll.
The internal conflict of opinions prompted the commission to arrange a three-day-long dialogue with political parties to seek their opinions on the issue. Of the 53 political parties that took part in the talks, 40 — including the ruling parties —favored a fresh roll.
The two election commissioners at the meeting argued that legal details should be looked into before taking any decision regarding preparation of the roll.
