Let peace prevail during upazila polls

The first phase of upazila polls ended amid much enthusiasm and without any major untoward incident. The ruling party claimed that the first phase of the upazila parishad polls was free, fair and largely peaceful. The opposition parties, on the other hand, said the ruling party cadres resorted to attacks in a number of polling centres in different places and carried out attacks on their candidates and their supporters.

A great relief was that we did not have to witness bloody violence that we are usually used to see during the elections. We saw a lot of brutality and vandalism in the recent past. There were incidents of chaos in some places resulting in suspension of voting in some polling centres. But those did not cause severe deterioration of law and order situation.

We happily noticed that the upazila elections created a festive atmosphere and witnessed a huge turnout of voters. Violence in any form destabilises the society, disrupts life of the citizens, and makes heavy toll on the economy. We saw enough of disorders and anarchy that greatly impacted our economy. With the gradual improvement of law and order situation, we are recovering the losses we suffered in recent past.

The second phase polls in 117 upazilas will take place on February 27. We hope these too be held in a peaceful atmosphere. So we wait for the remaining phases of the local government elections. To keep the wheels of our economy moving, we do not want to see repetition of any kind of chaos.

Abdul Lateef Akand

Meherpur