The Election Commission (EC) has dismissed accusations of financial misconduct levelled against it by the eminent citizens as baseless, lies and undesirable.
Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda in a press conference on Thursday said, “We are here to remove the confusion which may have been arisen in the public mind. The statement blaming EC is totally unacceptable.”
Huda did not take questions beyond his written speech in the conference, which was attended by Election Commissioner Md Rafiqul Islam, Kabita Khanam and Shahadat Hossain Chowdhury. Mahbub Talukdar was not present.
As many as 42 distinguished citizens accused the commission of indiscipline and serious financial misconduct and sent a letter to President Abdul Hamid urging him to order an investigation into the matter, reports bdnews24.com.
Supreme Court lawyer Shahdeen Malik, who was one an EC counsels, sent a letter to the president on Dec 14 on behalf of the citizens.
Professor Serajul Islam Choudhury, retired secretary and former caretaker government adviser Akbar Ali Khan, retired civil servant Hafizuddin Khan were among those who signed the letter.
The letter recommends the formation of a Supreme Judicial Council to investigate the complaints against the EC under Article 96 of the Constitution.
CEC Huda addressed the complaints outlined in the letter.
He insisted that there was ‘no scope’ of committing financial irregularities in the training expenses and that the accusations of corruption in the recruitment process were brought with other intentions. The allegations of using luxurious cars in violation of the rules were not true either.
“The EVMs [electronic voting machines] were being used to speed up the voting process. The EC is not directly involved in the purchase of the machines…so the allegations brought against EC in the statement are false.”
“The complaint of misconduct in the national and local elections is also untrue. The 2018 election was observed by foreign diplomats. They did not raise any objection, neither did the media. Rather, many local elections have been cancelled over irregularities.”
Huda continued, “The parliamentary and local government elections are being very competitive. Every post is being keenly contested by two to eight candidates. The turnout was 60 to 80 per cent.”
“The claim that the public has lost their faith in the election is fabricated.”
Earlier, Election Commission Shahadat Hossain on Dec 20 had termed the allegations of the distinguished citizens ‘fabricated and motivated’.
“What’s most painful is...they presented the allegations to the honourable president while accusing us at the same time. Not only that, they specified what we should do and what the punishment would be.”
