Bangladesh News

Election Working Group (EWG), Fair Election Monitoring Alliance (Fema), Janipop, Brotee and Bangladesh Human Rights Commission yesterday said the polls to the four city corporation and nine municipalities were held in a largely peaceful, credible, impartial and free atmosphere.

In their primary observation report, the four election observers said voter turnout was satisfactory despite the prevalence of inclement weather in a few of the constituencies.

The voting in general was free and fair except a few cases of irregularities, they observed.

Brotee found that the number of fake votes cast has so far been only 2 percent.

The election observers noticed that a significant number of women and marginalised section of the society such as the ethnic and religious minorities turned up to cast their votes.

However, a few of the voters experienced harassment and failed to cast their votes due various flaws in the voter roll and the voter ID cards, they said.

EWG, a coalition of 33 civil society organisations in its ‘quick impression’ survey said the voting process was peaceful with some irregularities.

Many of the election observers were denied access to observe the ballot counting process, it said.

“Only about 4.3 percent of 116 polling centres experienced any problem related to security forces on Election Day. Observers in three-city corporation reported no security concerns. However, in Sylhet, in 14.8 percent of polling centre observers reported that security officials were not performing their duties in a neutral way,” an EWG statement said.

“Observers were prevented from entering 17.5 percent of polling centres in three city corporations,” it added.

Fema in its preliminary findings said, “Voter turnout was satisfactory despite the prevalence of inclement weather in some areas, but the polling process was rather slow.”

“Fema has observed problems faced by some voters due to the confusion related to voter list with photo kept by polling officials and voter list without photo used by candidates,” it added.

“The poll by and large ended under peaceful atmosphere and no major untoward incident was reported. The poll in a broader sense was free and fair, though a few cases of impersonation came to the notice of the Fema observers.”

Brotee said their observers so far reported no case of violence or conflict.

“Since the voting environment was favourable for the voters, they participated willingly,” said Brotee.

“Electoral candidates were found tolerate to the electoral rules,” it said adding, “Most of the voters expressed their satisfaction regarding the overall environment in the centres.”

“The overall security condition was also very satisfactory,” Brotee said.

Police and Rapid Action Battalion personnel brutally beat up agitating voters at Ward 6 during the Barisal City Corporation polls, injuring women and elderly, said a Brotee statement.

“On an average, 60 percent vote had been cast at the centres until 2:15pm … it is projected that it would reach 80% in the end.”