 | Election on Jan 23
07 December, 2006
The Election Commission (EC) yesterday rescheduled the upcoming ninth parliamentary elections, setting January 23 as the polling day instead of January 21, to ensure participation of all political parties in the next elections.
The dates for different stages of the election--submission of nomination papers, their scrutiny and withdrawal of candidature--have also been rescheduled in the new timetable.
The EC announcement of the new schedule--after 10 days of its surreptitious and hasty declaration of January 21 as the election date--came following a series of negotiations between the council of advisers to the caretaker government and political parties.
"The [polls] schedule was re-fixed so that all political parties can participate in the election," EC Secretary Abdur Rashid Sarkar said at a news briefing after announcing the new schedule finalised at an EC meeting yesterday afternoon.
"The election was rescheduled on the basis of a consensus among the political parties," he said.
Acting Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice Mahfuzur Rahman, however, declined to make any comment on the rescheduling.
The BNP accepted the changed polls schedule while The Awami League (AL) said it would comment on it after recasting of the EC is done.
"The Election Commission officials showed us a revised schedule and we have agreed with it," BNP Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan told reporters after a meeting with a team of advisers.
A meeting of the AL was going on at the time of filing this report at 8:30pm yesterday and AL Joint General Secretary Obaidul Quader told The Daily Star that the party will not formally say anything on the new election schedule before the meeting ends.
Release link:http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/12/08/d6120801022.htm
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