Bangladesh News

General Secretary of Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) Mujahidul Islam Selim has said the nation is going to witness a ‘bad election’ by the yearend as the government has failed to bring any fundamental changes in the institutions overseeing the polls process.

“Money game will be on, violence and manifold attempts to influence the administration will be there this time also,” he said.

Despite all this, the CPB will participate in the coming election as the nation badly needs an elected government, Selim said in an interview with The Daily Star.

“We think an elected government must govern the country, and restore people’s rights. So, a bad election is better than no election,” he said.

Referring to the government’s amending the Representation of the People Order (RPO) ‘under pressure from some parties’, the CPB leader said the coming election would be similar to the ‘farcical or semi-farcical’ elections held earlier.

Terming the caretaker government’s reform measures as ’something like cosmetics’, he said this government is following the policies of previous governments. “A tradition of plunder has been created in the economic, political and social arenas due to these policies.”

Opposing continuation of the state of emergency during the elections, Selim said his party had even opposed promulgation of it.

He believes the ‘blame game’ in politics will not end soon.

“Our politicians never take part in election with the mentality of accepting defeat also as the peoples’ verdict since they are not used to seeing election as an element of democracy. They consider taking party it in polls as an investment, and desperately try to recover their investment by any means.”