Cox’s Bazar, Jan 22 (bdnews24.com) – Elections to Ukhia Upazila in Cox’s Bazar have been called off, the district commissioner told bdnews24.com around 11pm on Wednesday, after 54 people were hurt as police and paramilitary BDR shot at unruly protesters earlier in the day. 

Manzur Alam Bhuiyan, the DC of the southeastern tourist district, said, “Tomorrow’s elections have been verbally postponed at the directive of the Election Commission. A written order will be made available tomorrow.” 

Ukhia Upazila Nirbahi officer Abu Ahmad Siddiqui also announced the postponement at around 11:30pm. 

Returning officer and additional DC M Omar Faruk said, “The process of deferring elections in Ukhia is on for the sake of holding a violence-free vote. However, I know of no final decision yet.” 

The DC and district police chief were on the scene but Faruk said he did not have the details of the incident as he had been in Cox’s Bazar town, some 37 km south off Ukhia. 

Senior assistant secretary at the EC Secretariat, Md. Abdul Baten, told bdnews24.com the polls to the Upazila were being postponed. He added an order would be issued by the EC on Thursday. 

The violence followed the Election Commission’s cancelled candidacy of a local Awami League leader. 

“[The protesters] rampaged through a bus station and damaged shops in the area,” said Ukhia police officer in charge Mustafa Kamal. 

The EC on Monday announced that Hamidul Huq Chowdhury, the general secretary of the Ukhia chapter of the Awami League, would not be allowed to run for Ukhia Upazila chairman on grounds of loan default. 

“Some 54 people were hurt, at least four of them sustaining bullet injuries, in clashes between the protesters and members of BDR, police and Ansar,” said the OC. 

Among the four sustaining bullet injuries, Akhter, 22, Mohammad Ali, 35 and another unidentified man were rushed to Ukhia Upazila Health Complex. The fourth, Shahabuddin, was transferred on to Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital. 

Police and witnesses said the mob tried to storm the local Upazila complex. 

“They snatched eight ballot boxes from a jeep headed to Thainkali Primary School polling centre and smashed them,” said Mustafa. 

“They also took away 2,807 ballot papers which they later set fire to.” 

Members of police and BDR were also among the injured, as was the candidate’s wife Nigar Sultana Huq, said the police officer. 

Hamidul, who after visiting the spot fainted, was admitted to the Upazila health complex. 

The OC told bdnews24.com, “The Awami League demonstrators supporting Hamidul blockaded the main road.” 

The incident brought traffic to a halt on the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf road until around 5pm, he added. 

The demonstrators had calmed down and were withdrawing barricades, and traffic movement had resumed in the evening, Mustafa said. 

However, Hamidul’s media officer, Azad, who gave only one name, said Wednesday night, “The demonstration is still on-going. The protestors will not budge until they get a written order.” 

District and Upazila election officials met with local AL leaders to discuss ways to restore normalcy. 

Source: BDNews24.Com News

The fate of the caretaker government - going forward

On and off, there has been a talk about the need and justification of the caretaker government.  It important to recognize that if we as a nation have done anything thoguhtful, this is it. In a way, we have recognized our shortcomings and put it on paper. While should work to correct the shortcomings, it is also important that this system has served us well so far, with some hiccup off coruse. We should be very careful in touching the system. Here are some thoughts.

[This is a repeat article. Given the political parties are working on their election manifestos, we thought it might be a good time to remind ourselves of the importance of protecting what have achieved so far. Here is the article with minor modification:]
 
 
Please allow us tell you one thing in a very plain language and propose something very humbly.
 
If our post-independence politicians have done anything good for themselves and for the country, it is the idea, demand and implementation of caretaker government system. The way this idea evolved and eventually got implemented, this is true example of participatory policy innovation where situation had driven the eventual solution to an acute problem that we had.
 
It is significant for various reasons from the context of political culture of Bangladesh. First of all, this is significant because it is probably one instance where our politicians have spoken the truth, they have acknowledged that they have a problem - we have a problem. And we have actually worked to solve the problem.

Now, nindukera will say that they neither tell the truth to rescue the country nor they had the best interest of the general people behind this policy. Rather they used their brain here because it was about the ruti-ruji’r vaga-vagi for them! But let us forget that aspect for today. After all, we want to look forward.
 
So, what is the problem with this rule? 
 
There is no problem. Actually, we think this is a rule that will be copied or should be copied in most of the countries in coming days. This would be our next major export of idea - after micro-credit which is being implement around the world including in New York! Why do we think so? Because, this rule recognizes the limitation of an election-based democratic system for a soceity which is do not have enough tolerance, a system which has not developed the institutions to check and balance the problems of a democracy. The system of caretaker government acutally enforces some of the check and balance into the system nicely. 
Off course, this is also an indication of a weak democracy - a demonstration of not-so-developed system. In other words, as long as we or any other country have it, it will be an indication that we have a problem within our system. Probably, thats why our intellects are trying to give lesson to us. They are like haturey dactars. You have a disease - but they would like you to beleive that you have been cured! This exactly have been happening in our national porimondol during the last several decades. We think there is still need for the system of caretaker system. It is not only a demonstration of our weakness, but it also is a demonstration of our effort that we are working towards fixing the problem. At least, this system prevents a negative progression. 
 
Let us assume we are working towards fixing the problem - but when would we be done fixing it? How would we know?
 
This off course is a koti takar prosno. But we think this can be solved by some modification in the act. Election commission should consider making a minor amendment in the rules of the national election. The political parties should also include this in their election manifesto. Good thing would be if they can cooperate among themselves now and put an exactly same thing on their manifestos (same as far as modification of caretaker system is concerned). The idea is something like this:
 
During a national election every five years, the election commission can hold a parallel referendum asking a simple question - “Do you think our next national election should not be held under a caretaker government?”So, during the election people will send a slate of MP to the parliament. At the same time, they will also mention whether they think the upcoming government will be in power during the next election or whether a caretaker government should be installed for the next election. For example, say during the upcoming election, Party X may win the parliament but at the same time people might express their lack of confidence in that they do not think the same party can hold a fair election (which means there has be a caretaker government after the Party X ends its tenure).

In other words, people sends this Party X to form the government, but they do not think that the national institutions are strong enough to rely on Party X to hold the next national election. So, when the time of next national election comes, a caretaker government will be formed to hold that election. This would be repeated indefinitely. 

There might be other minor things that can be done to improve the current provision of the caretaker government. But on broad scale, we should not think that our system has already outgrown the need of the caretaker system nor we have become more tolerant. Not yet.
 
Makes sense?
 
If you thought some of the ideas are worth of your reading time, please forward it to others. If you have an ear to the columinsts in regular traditional media, please forward it to them. If you have an ear to the journalists and news editors of the electronic media, discuss it with them. Hope they would look at the suggestions and give due diligence.  
 
Thanks for your time,
Innovation Line
 
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Note: This is a freelance column, published mainly in different internet based forums. This column is open for contribution by the members of new generation, sometimes referred to as Gen 71. If you identify yourself as someone from that age-group and want to contribute to this column, please feel free to contact. Thanks to the group moderator for publishing the article as Creative Commons contents. 
 
Use ICT to practice democracy.

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Tags: Bangladesh, Caretaker Government

August 2007, Bangladesh caretaker Government has started a project to collect data of all voter in Bangladesh with picture and fingerprint. Is it a Voter list with pictures project or national identity cards (NID) project? The confusion was started from the beginning. The election commission of Bangladesh claims it as a Voter list with pictures project although Bangladesh Army claims it as a national identity cards project. On a live talkshow on Ekushey_Television (ETV) journalists asked Brig. General (Retd) Shakhawat Hussain, The Chief Election Commissioner of Bangladesh that why Election Commission is thinking of preparing National ID card rather than Voter ID card for which they are dictated by the constitution? The answer was that the Election Commission is primarily working for voter list and Voter ID card but data that is collected by the process could be utilized to produce the national ID card. Virtually they are preparing a database which in future will be taken up by the other ministries or other organizations and will be utilized to serve many other purposes. So a national ID card would be produced as a bi-product of the database preparation for the election. But as far the news from Bangladesh Government, they has not imported any finger print matching servers yet to process biometrics finger prints. Even, Election Commission of Bangladesh has not taken any initiative to purchase this type of servers. Central server has not made yet to store Data collecting from the several areas. Back up servers is not established as well. Now less standard offset papers are used to prepare NID. An Army staff related with this project says that this ID card is being given after the lamination of printed information and picture on the offset paper. Two dimensional (2D) barcode technologies are used in NID though is looks like very feeble. Name, birth date, ID number and finger print of a person are included in this ID card. This information can be collected through using the 2D barcode readers. Two company named Tiger IT and Doha tech have made the software which is used by election commission for NID project is not tasted to work such a big project yet. Is no risky practice to use untested software in this project ? Asked by <a href=”http://www.groundreport.com/arafatul”>Arafatul Islam</a>, One Weekly News Magazine of Bangladesh “Shaptahik 2000”. His full report can be found <a href=”http://www.shaptahik2000.info/issues/2007/year-10/issue_12/pdf/pp20070803.pdf”>here</a>.

Tags: Bangladesh, National ID, Voter List

India Offers Electricity Exports for Bangladesh.

In a meeting with India’s State Minister for Power and Commerce Jairam Ramesh and M. Tamim, an aide to the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Indian authority offers up to 1000 MW electricity from plants in Tripura, where generation capacity exceeds demand, and other north-eastern Indian states bordering Bangladesh.

Mr. Tamim ask India to give a formal proposal to verify the possibility of Electricity import from India.

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India s installing the 700 MW plant at Palatana, 60 km (38 miles) from Agartala, the capital of Tripura, but has warned the project may be impacted by turmoil in markets.

Mr. Ramesh proposed Bangladesh could be a partner in the Tripura power plant, with 10 to 15 percent share, Tamim said.

The World Bank said on Saturday it had approved a $350 million loan for Bangladesh to build more power plants to help overcome a chronic shortage of power.

Report by Reuters.