The Amar Bangladesh Party (AB Party) has accused the Election Commission (EC) of being partisan for not giving it registration as a political party.
In a press release issued on Tuesday, AB Party said 93 new political parties had applied for registration, out of which the commission initially shortlisted 12 political parties considering the required documents and information given with the applications. AB Party said it was at the top of that list.
However, on July 16, the EC decided that it would register two of the parties — the Bangladesh Nationalist Movement (BNM) and the Bangladesh Supreme Party (BSP) — which had never been heard of being involved in any political activities in the public interest, said AB Party.
AB Party mentioned that unlike the two parties in question, people were aware of a few political activities centred on issues of public interest by the 10 parties left out by the commission.
“The commission's decision is, therefore, not only unfortunate but a direct obstruction to exercise constitutionally afforded political and fundamental rights,” the statement said.
Accordingly, the situation suggested that it would be difficult even for the commission to vouch that quite a significant number of political parties already registered have at all met two of the three criteria that the commission requires parties to meet for registration. The commission, therefore, appears to be keen on making the electoral field extremely difficult for any other political party outside the ambit or alliance of the ruling party to get into the fray.
Such a move before the election in Bangladesh is a clear sign of the EC's unwillingness to make the elections participatory and inclusive, the statement added.
AB party, in this regard, stated that the EC is not only disregarding its constitutionally binding duty to be independent and fair in its conduct but also becoming an active instrument in violating fundamental human rights afforded under Article 21 of UDHR and Article 25 of ICCPR.
“The objective of the registration of political parties is to bring about some order and discipline. However, the rules in this regard should not be so rigid as to keep most of the active political parties out of the election race.”
According to the prevailing laws, in order to be registered, a political party must have 22 district committees and 100 upazila committees. Besides, there have to be party offices in all these units along with at least 200 voter members.
AB Party said these conditions are considered too stringent for a political party as well as too expensive. It is unrealistic to expect a party, before registration, to have committees and offices in around one-third of the country's districts.
Despite such a high bar and difficult conditions imposed for a newly formed political party, AB Party has met all the requirements and duly submitted its application, it said.
“The denial of our registration on a flimsy ground only proves that the EC is using registration as a means to obfuscate liberal political forces and creating an environment to slide further into the authoritarian slope which the country has been heading towards after the last two farcical elections in 2014 and 2018,” AB Party claimed.
