‘Those responsible for election irregularities should be held to account’

Daily Star Bangla Editor Golam Mortoza today said that the Electoral Reform Commission should recommend punishment to those responsible for irregularities in the last three national elections.
While talking to reporters after holding a meeting with the reform commission, he also proposed direct election to the reserved seats for women in the parliament.
Mortoza also proposed increasing the reserved seats to 100 from 50.
He said that political parties should nominate their candidates for the national polls.
The reform commission will sit with the three previous Chief Election Commissioners — Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmed, KM Nurul Huda and Kazi Habibul Awal — and ask them why they held voter less election and elections where stuffing took place on the previous night of polls.
“The reform commission should ask them on whose order they held such and elections,” Mortoza said.
The Kazi Habibul Awal-led Election Commission had been at the centre of controversy as it held the most recent national polls boycotted by the major opposition parties, including the BNP. The AL had to field “dummy” independent candidates, many of whom were AL leaders, to make the polls appear participatory.
The KM Nurul Huda-led commission became controversial after the December 2018 general election took place with opposition parties alleging ballot-box stuffing the night the before election.
In January 2019, the Jatiya Oikya Front alleged before the EC that between 30 and 60 percent of the votes were cast the night before. The same month, Transparency International, Bangladesh in a study found that stamping of ballots took place the night before election day in more than one centre in 33 of the 50 surveyed constituencies.
Before that, the Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad-led commission held a one-sided national election in January 2014, in which 153 lawmakers out of 300 were elected unopposed as most of the opposition, including the BNP, boycotted the election. The AL-led alliance won more than two-thirds majorities in all three national elections held under the Hasina government.