Desk Report:
The National Citizens Party (NCP) has requested the Election Commission to amend the Rules of Conduct, 2008 to allocate the symbol of the lotus, white lotus or red lotus.
The party sent this request to the Senior Secretary of the Election Commission Secretariat through an e-mail on Wednesday.
The application signed by NCP convener Nahid Islam said, “Since its inception as a political party, our delegation has been regularly exchanging views, meeting and maintaining communication with the Election Commission. Since April, the NCP delegation has been participating in regular discussions with the Election Commission on various election-related issues including election laws, political party registration process, registration deadline, and voting rights of expatriates.
“In view of the 13th National Parliament elections, the Election Commission has taken the initiative to list new election symbols in the relevant provisions of the Rules of Conduct, 2008 as part of various preparations. The Commission formed a committee to add symbols to the list of the Election Commission and the relevant committee prepared a final draft to include a total of 150 symbols. A delegation of NCP met with a member of the committee at the Election Commission on June 4 and assured the public that the “Shapla” symbol would be included in the final list. In addition, news about this issue was also published in the media.
‘Then on June 22, NCP submitted an application for registration as a political party as per the public notice of the memorandum published by the Bangladesh Election Commission Secretariat and applied for the reservation of the “Shapla” symbol in favor of the party.’
The application states, ‘As soon as NCP applied to the Election Commission for the allocation of the “Shapla” symbol, the general public across the country started recognizing the Shapla as the symbol of NCP and an unprecedented spiritual relationship centered on the NCP’s Shapla symbol was established with the public. In addition, in July, the NCP held a nationwide July march and in that program, the general public of Bangladesh embraced the NCP and spontaneously collected saplings from canals, beels and water bodies and participated in the program and welcomed the sapling from the heart as the symbol of the NCP.
‘Recently, after all the verification and selection at the field level was completed and all the conditions of registration were met, the Election Commission decided to register the NCP as a political party. But on September 23, the senior secretary of the commission told the media that sapling was not included in the list of symbols in the election conduct rules and therefore the sapling symbol cannot be allotted to the NCP. Such an arbitrary decision and such a statement by the Election Commission are unwelcome and regrettable. Such a reckless act of the Election Commission raises questions in the public mind about their impartiality and their interest in organizing a free, fair and impartial election and creating a level playing field for all parties is questioned.
“Overall, we hope that the Election Commission will make the necessary amendments to the 2008 Election Conduct Rules and allocate any one of the symbols from 1. Shapla, 2. White Shapla and 3. Red Shapla in favor of the Jatiya Nagorik Party, and in this regard, the Election Commission will abandon its previous arbitrary and one-sided attitude in making its decisions and will make decisions in such a way that their interest in organizing a free, fair and impartial election and creating a level playing field for all parties is not questioned in the public mind.”
