Hold local govt polls before general ones

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Local government representatives urged the government to hold local government elections before the general elections in December to reduce political influence on them.

They said this during the government-citizens’ group dialogue yesterday.

Around 300 elected city corporation officials attended the dialogue at the Chief Adviser’s Office, where they held three separate meetings. The government held meetings with city corporation commissioners, municipality mayors and union parishad chairmen.

Commerce Adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman told the post-dialogue joint press briefing that the government would discuss holding local elections earlier with political parties and at the next cabinet meeting.

Anwar Hossain, a ward commissioner from the City Corporation Association, said, “We want local government elections at all levels to be held before general elections to free it from any political influence.”

Abul Hossain Khan, vice-president of Union Chairmen Oikya Jote, said the local elections must be held before the general elections because previous elected governments never kept their promise of holding local government elections.

Municipal Chairmen Association President Shamim Al-Razi echoed these views, adding that the general elections should also be held according to the government roadmap.

He also said the local representatives must also get a bigger chunk of the budget and be exempt from value added tax (VAT).

All three groups also urged the government to review distribution of power between the president and the prime minister, ban hartals and aborodhs (sieges), decentralise political party structures and an end to interference of lawmakers and bureaucrats in their work.

Asked why they want the re-distribution of power between the president and the prime minister, the representatives said it was to end the “concentration of power” in one hand. They did not go into details.

Hossain Zillur said, the dialogue is part of the process to qualitatively change politics in Bangladesh by clearly separating the power and mandate of the central and local governments.

He mentioned that the local government representatives proposed that the prime minister and the opposition leaders should meet every two months to discuss important national issues.

They also proposed that the maximum days of continued absence from parliament permissible should be reduced to 30 days from 90.

VIDEO CONFERENCE WITH NRBs
The government is going to hold video conferences with non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) in an extension of its dialogue on key national issues.

A firm having expertise in video conferencing has already been asked to look into the details of arranging such conferences, LGRD Adviser Anwarul Iqbal said yesterday.

“We are seriously considering holding video conferences with non-resident Bangladeshis as they have expressed their interest to take part in the ongoing dialogue,” the adviser told reporters at his office at Bangladesh Secretariat yesterday after a meeting with a delegation of NRBs from the UK.

However, the NRB delegation is interested in face-to-face talks rather than video conferencing.

“We are interested more in direct dialogue if the government invites us,” Mahbub Rahman, a public relations officer of the Local Government Authority, London, told reporters.

The adviser said they had already received such expression of interest from NRBs.

Without specifying any date, he said they will soon begin such dialogue. “NRBs requesting video conference later on would have their conference later.”

Asked how the NRBs would represent themselves, Anwarul Iqbal said it is for the NRBs to decide.

“There will be no political banner; we are holding dialogue with them considering them as Bangladeshis.”

The expatriate delegation, led by community leader Muhibur Rahman Muhib, had gone to the Election Commission and met the army chief and adviser for expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment to ask for enrolling Bangladeshis living abroad as voters.

On their request, the EC has agreed to include the NRBs in the voter list and would place their recommendations before the cabinet soon, said Mahbub Rahman.

The delegation echoed the government’s wish about holding local government elections before the national elections.

Asking the government to continue the ongoing anti-corruption drive, the NRB delegation said remittance saw a record increase from $6bn to $9bn during this period.

Asked whether the expatriates want elections amid a state of emergency, the NRB delegation said they want a free and fair election by December and the government would decide whether it would be amid the state of emergency.

The delegation also included Amin Ali, founder of The Red Fort restaurant, London, Enamul Haque Chowdhury, director of Dhaka Regency Hotel, Khaled Chowdhury, founder of British-Bangladesh Curry Club, and Nazrul Islam Minto, chief editor of Canada-based weekly “Deshe Bideshe”.

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