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Download PDF After a break of over a year and a half, the Election Commission (EC) resumes a formal electoral process today by announcing schedules for polls to four city corporations and nine municipalities amid a relaxed state of emergency.
According to its plans, the next few months will be months of ballots with elections to more local government bodies including upazila parishads before the ninth parliamentary polls in December.
Meanwhile, the home ministry has finalised a notification to be issued this afternoon, relaxing the Emergency Powers Rules (EPR), 2007. The amended EPR will facilitate electioneering amid the state of emergency by allowing processions and rallies, sources in the ministry said.
There has not been any election since October 2006 when the EC stopped holding polls to local government bodies to prepare for the ninth parliamentary polls in January, 2007.
But in the wake of political turmoil, President Iajuddin Ahmed on January that year 11 promulgated the state of emergency and cancelled the election scheduled for January 22.
Though terms of most of the local government units have expired by this time, the EC did not move to hold any polls citing the state of emergency and absence of a fair voter list.
According to the schedules that Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda will announce this afternoon, polls to four city corporations–Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal and Sylhet–and nine municipalities–Manikganj Sadar, Chuadanga Sadar, Shariatpur Sadar, Naohata in Rajshahi, Dupchanchiya in Bogra, Sripur in Gazipur, Phulbaria in Mymensingh, Golapganj in Sylhet and Sitakunda in Chittagong–might be held by the end of July or early August.
After these, the EC will hold polls to Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) and some other municipalities in September. Besides, it will hold polls to 482 upazila parishads in phases from next October.
On completion of the parliamentary polls in the third week of December, the commission will begin preparations for holding polls to over 4,000 union parishads from mid-January or early February.
Elections to the remaining upazilas and municipalities will be slotted in between the union parishad polls, said senior officials at the EC Secretariat.
The EC in its electoral roadmap unveiled on July 15 last year announced that it would start conducting polls to local government bodies in January 2008 and continue till the parliamentary polls in December.
But it had to back down on the plans due to the state of emergency and voter listing.
Terms of the Dhaka, Rajshahi and Khulna city corporations ended in May 2007 while those of Barisal and Sylhet in November and December the same year.
Mayors of the city corporations excepting the DCC have been detained for quite a long time now on charges of corruption while many of the ward commissioners have been on the run from law enforcers.
Major political parties have been opposing holding local government polls before the parliamentary election, fearing further delay in holding the general election.
However, both the caretaker government and the EC have maintained that the national election is their top priority.
The commission, reconstituted in February 2007, has been saying that the polls to city corporations and municipalities would give it a chance to see how the new electoral rules work.
August 4th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
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