BD parliamentary election

The Jatiyo Sangshad, meaning national parliament, has 350 members of which 300 members are directly elected through a national election for a five-year term in single-seat constituencies while 50 memberships are reserved for the women who are selected by the ruling party or coalition. The Prime Minister is the head of the government.
The president who is the head of the state is elected by the National Parliament. The president of Bangladesh is a ceremonial post and he/she does not exercise any control over the running of the state.

The history behind the parliamentary election:

Election commission building

Government opponents claim that democracy in Bangladesh is broken. They call the 2014 general elections invalid and say the upcoming elections will be, too. They allege that the disappearance of some opposition leaders was a government conspiracy.

They are wrong. None of these claims are true.

The truth is that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party or BNP chose to boycott the last election. It then complained that too few political parties participated, resulting in a sham. This was a cynical ploy.
election commission bd

    

Blame for the imperfect 2014 election rested entirely with the BNP, not the governing Awami League party. The BNP didn’t put up a single candidate for parliament to add controversy to the elections.

The BNP failed Bangladesh in 2014. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said repeatedly that free and fair elections are the cornerstone of democracy and even asked the BNP to help oversee the elections. But the BNP rejected her concessions and walked away rather than wage a public fight. Instead, several of its leaders chose to firebomb polling places.

Worse, the BNP appears poised to turn its back on the elections again this year. It has again threatened to stir civil unrest and violence.

BNP leaders – along with members of the allied and often belligerent Jamaat-e-Islami – sparked violent protests that suppressed the vote and tore at the soul of our nation in 2014. They and their collaborators set fire to thousands of homes, cars, buildings and businesses. They demolished power stations, murdered 20 law enforcement officers and torched government buildings. On election day, they terrorized their political opponents with Molotov cocktails.

As one man interviewed by Human Rights Watch recalled: “The attackers were our neighbors from the other side of the village. They are all BNP-Jamaat. They asked us not to vote. Between 9 and 11 a.m., they actually blocked the road so no one could go to the polling center. Then at 11 they began the attack.”

Several BNP leaders were charged for their roles in the violence. As a result, the party’s popularity dwindled to all-time lows.


But the BNP never accepted responsibility for its recklessness. When BNP-linked agitators fled prosecution, the BNP alleged that they had been the victims of “enforced disappearances.” Bangladesh police have investigated every instance of a reported disappearance. They have found no evidence of government involvement. What they have found is that some of the "disappeared” went into hiding to evade prosecution for violent crimes.

Take Salahuddin Ahmed, who was reportedly abducted by Bangladesh police in 2015. He was found two months later, hiding in India where the police quickly concluded that he concocted the entire episode in an attempt to evade justice in Bangladesh. Others reappeared quickly. BNP-linked intellectual Farhad Mazhar was found just hours after he was reported missing on a bus travelling from the southwestern city of Khulna to the capital, Dhaka.

The government hopes that the BNP has recognized its mistakes and is willing to fight a war of ideas, not violence in 2018. Bangladesh should expect nothing less from an opposition party.

Some in the BNP assert that they can’t do so because their former leader, Khaleda Zia, is in jail. Some commentators are demanding her release, even threatening to “take to the streets” to disrupt elections if she isn’t freed.

If that happened, Bangladesh would be relinquishing its hard-won adherence to the rule of law. Zia was sentenced to five years in prison in February for stealing for herself more than $250,000 that was intended for the welfare of orphans. Nineteen other charges are pending against her. Five relate to corruption during her tenure as Prime Minister years ago and were filed by an independent Anti-Corruption Commission. Fourteen charges relate to the riots in 2014.