DHAKA, 2 July 2004 — The opposition parties in Bangladesh called for canceling the results of a parliamentary by-election in Dhaka yesterday, accusing the ruling Nationalist-Islamist coalition of massive rigging and intimidation to give a landslide victory to its candidate, officials said.
The Election Commission provisionally declared coalition’s candidate Mosaddek Ali Falu victorious in the by-election which has been marred by a low turnout.
The opposition’s candidate Abdul Mannan, who belongs to the newly floated Bikalpo Dhara party, refused to concede defeat claiming that the coalition government used irregular means to snatch victory in the prestigious by-election. “The ruling coalition resorted to coercion to drive out my polling agents from almost all the 103 polling stations apparently to stuff ballot boxes with false votes,” Mannan said.
He also alleged at a news conference that he was himself thrown out of a polling station by hired goons of the ruling coalition. Senior government ministers denied the charges of vote fraud blaming the opposition for trying to stir up political discontent on falsehood. Falu is a senior political adviser to Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and his election bid for a parliamentary seat grabbed local media attention. Mannan has threatened to take the coalition to court over charges of rigging the polls. Several election observers said the turnout was low in yesterday’s by-election and many polling stations looked deserted.
More than 300,000 voters were registered in the commercial cum residential constituency in the heart of the capital city. As many as 22 people contested the polls.
Professor A.Q.M. Badruddoza Chowdhury, former president and Bikalpo Dhara chief, dismissed the parliamentary by-election as an “unprecedented fraud.”
Mannan’s chief election agent Mahi B. Chowdhury MP filed a four-point written complaint with the Election Commission, calling for cancellation of the poll results.
