He leaves Khaleda’s allegations of stage-managed polls for people to judge, UZ polls as per schedule
Staff Correspondent
Terming Monday’s elections free, fair and credible, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda on Thursday called on all to show respect to people’s verdict.
He said the EC is satisfied with holding such an election that has been applauded by the world community.
“The EC is very much satisfied with the total process of the elections. We have presented a fair and acceptable election before both the international and local community,” he said at his first post election press briefing at the EC secretariat yesterday afternoon.
“Nobody should ignore the people’s verdict and everybody should pay respect to it,” he said responding to a query about the allegations of some political parties that the Monday’s election was stage-managed.
CEC thanked the citizens who paved the way for restoring democracy in the country through casting their valuable votes.
The commission would publish the gazettes of the parliamentary elections by Thursday. “Our target is to publish the gazettes by Thursday. It will take only one hour to be printed,” he said replying to a question as to when the EC will publish the results of the JS polls.
He informed that the highest votes were cast in the Rajshahi-5 constituency with total of some 94.89 percentages while the lowest votes in Dhaka-11 with 72.48 percentages.
The CEC said the overall voter’s turnout was approximately 86.29 percent in the Monday’s parliamentary elections.
“Over 90 percentage of vote counted in some 74 parliamentary seats, 85-90 percentage in 122 seats, 80-85 percentage in 69 seats, 75-80 percentage in 29 seats and bellow 70 percentage in 5 JS seats,” he told journalists.
Referring to the election result, the CEC said, of the total votes cast, Bangladesh Awami League obtained 48.06 percent, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) scored 32.45 percent, Jatiya party got 7.05 percent and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami bagged 4.60 percent.
Categorically 2.95 percent votes went to independent candidates and Islami Shashantantra Andolan scored some 1.05 percent votes in the election while other parties obtained less than one percentage.
About the ‘No-votes’ he said a total of 3, 82, 437 votes were cast as no votes across the country which is 0.55 percentage of the total votes.
Replying to a question about the EC’s campaign for the competent candidates, the CEC said the voters and the political parties would decide who would be competent. “We don’t have right to say who will be competent and who will not but only we can disseminate the information about the candidates among the voters,” he said.
The CEC said the elections to all upazilla would be held as per schedule on January 22.
Terming the year-2009 as the year of elections, the CEC said the commission would remain busy in holding the elections to Dhaka City Corporation, Chittagong City Corporation, municipalities and union parishads across the year.
Asked how the EC looks at Khaleda Zia’s allegation that the polls were stage-managed, Huda said allegation of such a senior political leader has been left to people’s judgment.
Election Commissioner Brig Gen (Retd) M Sakhawat Hossain and EC secretary M Humayun Kabir were present at the press briefing.
Courtesy: thebangladeshtoday.com
