MUNICIPAL POLLS : Electioneering begins with code violation

CANDIDATES and their campaigners began electioneering in a festive mode on Wednesday, the first day of formal electioneering for the elections to 234 municipal councils schedule for December 30.
New Age correspondents reported from districts that most of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party mayoral candidates were not seen in campaign on the day as a large number of them were facing cases.
At most of the places, ruling Awami League candidates brought out processions and mass contacts on Wednesday.
Some AL and independent candidates violated electoral code of conduct in the first day’s campaign at places.
The Election Commission is, however, likely to issue show-cause notice to some other AL lawmakers on charge of their alleged involvement in violation of electoral code of conduct while three lawmakers –Safiqul Islam Shimul from
Natore-2, MA Malek for Dhaka-20 and Shawkat Hasnur Rahman for Barguna-2 – already apologised to the commission.
Malek and Shawkat on Wednesday and Safiqul on Tuesday replied to the show-cause notice issued by the commission on Sunday.
In their replies, the three lawmakers said that the violations of code of conduct were unintentional mistakes, commission secretary Sirazul Islam said.
According to him, the lawmakers said that they offered apology saying that they would try to refrain from getting involved in such activities in future.
The commission on Wednesday issued letters to 20 political parties, who were contesting the polls, asking them to go by the electoral code of conduct.
Commission deputy secretary Jasmin Tuli sent the letters to general secretaries or secretary generals of the parties including ruling Awami League and BNP, a commission official said.
The commission official said that the commission would ask returning officers concerned to issue show-cause notices on people who would violate the rules.
Commission deputy secretary Shamsul Alam said that the commission also formed a two-member committee headed by one of its deputy secretaries, to look into the allegations of violation of electoral code of conduct reported in the media.
He said that the committee would monitor media reports on violation of rules, analyse them, observe the real situation on the ground and then submit its evaluation report to the commission.
At a formal press briefing, Sirazul Islam said that the party nominated mayoral would be allowed to use election symbols before December 14 in the electioneering.
He said the commission made the decision as the independent candidates would be allocated their election symbols on December 14.
About commission’s move to bring about changes to the Municipality (Electoral Code of Conduct) Rules 2015, Sirazul Islam said, ‘There are some clerical mistakes and the commission has sent a proposal to the law ministry for correction.’

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