Bangladesh News

The European Commission (EC) will again deploy its poll observers for the next general election in Bangladesh and the mission’s headquarters in Brussels will send a delegation next month to monitor the pre-poll situation.

“The chief of EC poll observer team would arrive here in two or three weeks,” EC Ambassador to Bangladesh Stefan Frowein said yesterday.

Frowein was talking to newsmen after a meeting between an EC delegation led by him and a BNP team led by party Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan at the BNP’s election office at Banani in the capital.

Earlier, the EC had suspended all its election-related activities in Bangladesh amidst uncertainty about the January 22 election, which has already been cancelled.

“We are meeting here many political stakeholders and business bodies to understand what is happening,” Frowein said. They discussed matters related to the election at the meeting with BNP and got some fine and interesting information that they could not tell right now, he added.

“The EC team (poll-related) now here will return to Brussels soon and submit a report on its activities,” he said. After assessing the report, the next team led by the chief observer may come back within the next two or three weeks.

The EC delegation at yesterday’s meeting included its election monitoring member Halean Camblee, local mission First Secretary C Whittly and Jaohanes Hacinger, another official.

The BNP team included Reaz Rahman and AHM Mofazzal Karim, advisers to party chairperson Khaleda Zia.

The BNP leaders expressed their views for holding an election as early as possible to ensure continuity of the democratic process, meeting sources said.

Reaz Rahman, also former foreign affairs adviser, later told newsmen that the EC team wanted to know from them about the current political situation as well as the next general election.

“We told them that we (BNP) want the election to be held as soon as possible.”

He said, the EC delegation showed interest in sending observers for monitoring the election.