EC officials hold meeting with EU expert team

CT Online Desk

The Election Commission on Sunday held a meeting with the European Union’s four-member election expert team that came to Dhaka on November 29 on a two-month mission to monitor the next general election slated for January 7.

The meeting was held at Agargaon Nirbachon Bhaban. After the meeting, EC additional secretary Ashok Kumar Debnath told reporters that the EU expert team, through the foreign ministry would expressed its desire to sit with the EC officials.

‘In view of that I along with our joint secretaries sat with them. They will stay in Bangladesh till January 23. They basically asked us about certain things, we told them,’ he said. He said that the delegation would observe all matters before and after the election.

‘Check whether there is any violation of the electoral code of conduct. They want to know the laws relating to elections. Basically the laws are written in Bengali making it difficult to understand. So they want to know whether these laws are in English somewhere or whether we can give them English translations. We have already provided some English copies of the constitution to them, and will do the rest,’ he said.

Ashok Kumar said that the team would travel all over the country, there were some inquiries in this regard and they wanted to know them from the EC.

‘If necessary, they want to sit with the Election Commission a few more times. Everything, including their safety issues, was discussed in the meeting. They can travel all over the country after informing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the related security issues,’ he added.

He also said that they wanted to know how many candidates were participating in our elections, how many parties were participating in the polls, how many foreign observer teams would come, how many local observers will be there.

‘We think that they are convinced by our words,’ he said.

Election expert David Noel Ward led the EU team.

The three other members of the visiting team are — electoral analysts Alexandre Mattus and Swibes Charlotte, and legal expert Rebecca Cox.

DCT/OL/SMKN/END