Amar Bangladesh Party, AB Party, delegation met the International Republican Institute, IRI, and National Democratic Institute, NDI, joint election assessment team on Tuesday. The team arrived in Dhaka last week to observe pre and post election violence including inter and intra-party violence, violence targeting women and other marginalised groups, online harassment and threats. The team was represented by Dr. Geoffrey Macdonald, a senior advisor in the Asia Division at the IRI, Nenad Marinkovic, Security and Physical Violence Expert, and Ivylo Pentchev, an Information Environment Analyst.
AB Party delegation was represented by Mojibur Rahman Monju, Member Secretary of the party, Tajul Islam, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh and a Joint Convenor, Asaduzzaman Fuaad, Zubair Ahmed Bhuiyan, both barrister-at-law and Joint Member Secretary, Nasreen Sultana Mily, a barrister-at-law and in-charge of AB Party Women. The meeting lasted for little over an hour and took place at an uptown area of the capital city.
Initially, the IRI/NDI was briefed about the AB Party, a new generation political platform which aspires to base their politics on problem solving through devising issue-based policies and programs. Then the discussion moved onto the forthcoming election and associated issues. The team was interested to know about the reasons for denial of electoral registration and updates on judicial review application outstanding at the High Court division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.
AB Party has been consistent in their call for a non-partisan election time government to hold a free, fair, participatory and credible election which simply cannot take place under an incumbent who lacks legitimacy. Referring to previous 11 elections, four were largely accepted as credible which were held under a neutral caretaker government when all the incumbents failed to have been re-elected.
The conversation then moved onto ongoing electoral violence across the country. AB Party informed the Election Assessment Team that law enforcement agencies and civil-military bureaucracy can hardly operate freely during election time under an unelected political government. Hence, despite endless election related violences, the EC cannot, or unwilling to some extent, take any tough action against anyone due to their loyalty to this authoritarian government.
Online threats and intimidation are widespread, a number of real life incidents experienced by AB Party leaders and activists were shared. Recent detention of three activists in Rangpur city while distributing leaflets was a matter of grave concern.
Women and members of ethnic minority communities feel more vulnerable during election campaign. It becomes ever more difficult for anyone from less-well-off background to make a choice or not to make any choice at all. Usually, ruling party candidates are very wealthy and maintains armed militias. Overall, a sense of total fear and intimidation captures the electoral environment.
