Jamaat presses EC on neutrality ahead
With the local government elections drawing closer, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami is moving to shape the rules of the contest before a single vote is cast, demanding Tuesday that the Election Commission exclude leaders of the banned Awami League from the polls and strip politically connected officials of their role in overseeing them.
The demands, delivered in a meeting between a six-member
Jamaat delegation and Chief Election Commissioner A.M.M. Nasir Uddin at the commission’s Agargaon headquarters, reflect a broader anxiety within Bangladesh’s opposition landscape: that the machinery meant to referee the country’s next elections is not as neutral as it should be.
Mia Golam Porwar, the party’s secretary general, told reporters after the meeting that Jamaat wants the commission to treat participation by leaders of any banned party – an unmistakable reference to the Awami League, whose activities have been suspended by the government – as itself a form of prohibited political activity.
Allowing such figures to run, he argued, would amount to letting a banned party operate under a different name at the local level.
The party pushed further on the question of institutional independence, objecting to the recent appointment of Shamsul Alam as an additional secretary at the commission because of his past work on a political party’s election-related committee.
Porwar said Jamaat had warned commissioners directly that such appointments to a constitutional body raise doubts about its impartiality – a message aimed as much at the commission’s credibility as at any single hire.
That same concern extended beyond the commission itself. Jamaat criticized the placement of officials with political ties as administrators of Zila Parishads, Upazila Parishads, city corporations and development authorities, arguing the appointments could let allies of the ruling party quietly build advantages before campaigning even begins.
The party asked that anyone who has served in such administrator roles be barred from contesting the coming elections, even if they resign once the election schedule is announced.
Separately, it urged the commission to keep sitting ministers, members of parliament and senior officials off the campaign trail entirely.
Alongside those structural demands, Jamaat also took up a narrower but symbolically charged grievance: a recommendation that would bar more than 30,000 teachers enrolled in the government’s Monthly Pay Order program from running for local office.
Porwar called the proposal discriminatory and pointed to what he described as its constitutional inconsistency – MPO-listed teachers can seek a parliamentary seat, he noted, yet would be blocked from contesting a Union Parishad race. He said the party had asked the commission to withdraw the recommendation.
The party’s nine demands, submitted in writing, now sit with a commission that is facing pressure from multiple directions to demonstrate its independence ahead of what is shaping up as a closely watched test of Bangladesh’s post-Hasina political order.
