No registration if parties do not ensure in-house democracy: CEC
Courtesy New Age 28/11/07
Political parties, including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, will have to amend their constitutions ensuring in-house democracy in order to get registration with the Election Commission.
‘If the parties come to us for registration without making changes in their constitutions, we will have no options but to say sorry,’ the chief election commissioner, ATM Shamsul Huda, put it bluntly at a dialogue with the Workers Party of Bangladesh on Tuesday.
‘I have thoroughly studied the constitution of BNP. It will also have to amend its constitution,’ he said.
No political party will be allowed to contest national elections without registration, according to the commission’s proposed reforms to the electoral laws.
Registration of the political parties will be completed by June next year for their participation in the polls, the CEC said.
Asked how the parties would amend their constitutions since it would require holding of party council sessions, which they cannot do under a state of emergency, the CEC told New Age Tuesday evening, ‘Space or scope should be made for them to change their constitutions’.
Responding to another query, he said, ‘When the registration process starts and the parties come for registration, we will examine their constitutions and ask for amendments to whichever cases we deem it necessary.’
‘If they want space or scope for holding councils for making the changes, we will ask them what kinds of scope or space they need,’ he said adding that the commission would then try to make the ‘space or scope’ accordingly.
The BNP will need to amend its constitution and perhaps the Jatiya Party too, he said adding that the commission was yet to go through the constitutions of other parties including the Awami League.
He censured the political parties at the dialogue for not practising in-house democracy. ‘The leaders of the parties keep talking of democracy, but do not practise in the party what they preach and their constitutions also do stipulate in-party democracy.’
In this context, Huda made an oblique reference to the expulsion of Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan from the BNP by Khaleda Zia, saying, ‘A man, who had held a post for 10 or 12 years, was sent packing. The commission will not allow any such things to happen.’
The CEC, however, said that the commission had no intention to control political parties. ‘Rather we want to be supportive…to help them to bring order and practise democracy.’
‘How can we control the political parties. We have no power or intention to do so. We do not want to be a regulatory body to command the political parties,’ the CEC told the Workers Party leaders attending the dialogue.
Talking to reporters after the dialogue, Workers Party president Rashed Khan Menon echoed the CEC’s views. ‘It is not becoming to talk about democracy unless they practise it within the party. The parties, which do not practise internal democracy, will have to make changes in their constitutions.’
The commission’s meeting with the WP was the 12th in a series of talks with political parties before finalising the draft of its proposals on electoral reforms. The commission sits next with the Bangladesher Samyabadi Dal tomorrow.
Menon, who led a 10-member delegation at the dialogue, asked the commission not to register the political parties propagating communalism, particularly the Jamaat-e-Islami, which had opposed the country’s liberation war in 1971.
‘War criminals and anti-liberation elements must not be allowed to register with the Election Commission,’ he said.
He said his party would not attend an all-party dialogue the EC was planning to hold before finalising the electoral reform proposals if Jamaat attended the meeting.
He smelt a rat in the EC’s plan to hold local government polls much before the national elections. ‘Holding national elections within a 90-day timeline is a constitutional obligation and so we want the parliamentary polls first. We have seen in the past that every military ruler favours local government polls first in a bid to build up a support base. EC should not get into it.’
Menon tabled the party’s electoral reform proposals which included introduction of a proportional representation system in elections, making the EC secretariat independent and a separate voters’ roll for the three districts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in accordance with the CHT peace treaty.
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