DHAKA: Bangladesh’s new voters, who account for about a third of the country’s electorate, may be a key tool for political change in the Dec. 29 elections, the election chief said yesterday.
More than 81 million people are eligible to vote in the Dec. 29 elections, which will end nearly two years of emergency rule by an army-backed government and return the South Asian country to democracy.
“New generation voters made the change in the United States by casting their votes for Barack Obama,” Chief Election Commissioner A.T.M. Shamsul Huda told reporters. “If the new voters vote for clean and honest candidates, I believe a change is also possible in our country,” he said. “That will change Bangladesh’s image positively.” Huda was speaking after a media briefing by the Bangkok-based Asian Network for Free Elections, which had fielded 50 short-term observers. Bangladesh election authorities warned election observers of being blacklisted if they are found politically biased during the elections. As many as 200,000 domestic and international observers are registered with the Election Commission to monitor the elections.
More than 1,000 foreign observers are expected from the United Nations, European Union, Japan, United States, South Korea and India. The government earlier relaxed regulations to allow them to obtain visas on arrival in Dhaka.
The front-runners in this month’s election are the Awami League, led by former Prime Minister Hasina Wajed, and Begum Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Bangladesh’s interim government, headed by former central bank governor Fakhruddin Ahmed, took over in January 2007, following widespread political violence, and canceled an election due that month.
The interim authority imposed a state of emergency and launched a crackdown on political corruption, in which both Hasina and Khaleda were arrested and held in prison for a year.
Bangladesh government has beefed up security for Hasina after a media report claimed Muslim militants were plotting to assassinate her, a top government adviser said Sunday.
Home Affairs Adviser M.A. Matin said Hasina was given extra protection after Indian television station CNN-IBN reported the alleged plot. The report Saturday cited unnamed Indian intelligence officials as saying a six-member suicide squad from Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, an Islamic group banned by Bangladesh, was planning an attempt on her life. Hasina said she is not scared of any assassination threats. Hasina said at a rally Sunday: “You have already read in newspapers about the apprehension of attacks on me. I am the daughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and I am not scared of any threats.”
Hasina said her life was under threat “since a certain quarter is afraid of the mass surge in favor of boat, her party’s electoral symbol, ahead of the parliamentary election”, The Daily Star reported yesterday. She blamed her political rivals, who are also in the poll fray. “Terrorists attacked me time and again and the BNP-Jamaat alliance government patronized the attackers,” Hasina said while addressing a poll rally at Tangail.
