New appointed an Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda. The next move will be one of seeing how the team led by Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda performs. By the experience of previous year, Bangladesh’s Election Commission has remained under pressure, with that defect, real or otherwise, of partisanship regularly undermining it or nasty to make it free. And Public perceptions of its performance will remain a mixed bag.
That takes one to the question of what the future holds for the Nurul Huda-headed Election Commission. The good news coming out of the search and subsequent selection of the new EC is that so far it has not raised any worrying dust of discontent, apart from the predictable kind from equally predictable quarters. The better news is that the search committee and then the President paid little attention to thoughts of roping some of our many television talk shows.
To the future, then, for the new EC. That will of sequence depend on whether or how soon and how strongly the new team can make it clear to the country that they will performance faithfully.
The record of the Shamsul Huda-headed Election Commission has so far not been matched. Nurul Huda will be doing himself and the country a huge favour if his team takes the Shamsul Huda EC as the benchmark to be equalled or bettered. The fact cannot be overlooked, though, of Shamsul Huda and his EC working at a time when no political government was in office. The country was under a state of emergency, with a putatively civilian caretaker government, led by Fakhruddin Ahmed, in charge and which owed its assertive nature to the presence and support of the military. That EC, it then follows, was sure of itself — because it had the imprimatur of the caretaker regime to go ahead with the business it needed to do.
KM Nurul Huda will be performing with a political government in office. Judging by the record of earlier ECs operating in the shadow of political or party dispensations, it is quite possible that the political classes will attempt to browbeat the new team into pressure. It is a condition the new EC should, in its own interest as well as that of the country, have control over.
The road ahead for the new Election Commission promises to be rocky. But some political party has already made it known that the EC is a reflection of the Prime Minister’s desire and that no fair or credible election can therefore be expected under KM Nurul Huda.
So we the people will wait and watch.
Regard
rm
