President Md Abdul Hamid has selected Kazi Habibul Awal, a law professor at BRAC University and former senior secretary of defence, to head the next Election Commission, reports bdnews24.com.
The appointment of the chief election commissioner was announced in a notice from the government on Saturday.
The four people Awal will get as election commissioners are former senior secretaries Md Alamgir and Anisur Rahman, retired district and sessions judge Rashida Sultana Emily and retired Brigadier General Ahsan Habib Khan.
The government did not specify a date for their oath. The chief justice swore in the last CEC and four commissioners a day after the Cabinet Division had announced their appointment.
Awal was born on Jan 21, 1956 and obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in law from Dhaka University.
He enrolled in the Bangladesh Bar Council as an advocate in 1980 and joined the Dhaka District Bar Association.
Awal qualified for the judicial service after passing the Bangladesh Civil Service (Judicial) Competitive Examination in 1980 and was appointed as an assistant judge in 1981. In 1997, he was promoted to the post of district and sessions judge.
He has worked as secretary to the Bangladesh Law Commission, a chairman of the Labour Court and project director of the Bangladesh Legal and Judicial Capacity Building Project. He has also worked in the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs and was eventually appointed its secretary in 2007.
Awal later held posts as secretary in the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 2010 and secretary in the Ministry of Defence in 2014. He was appointed as a senior secretary to the same ministry in December of that year. He retired in 2015.
The president had formed a search committee that nominated 10 candidates for the five posts. The committee submitted the names on Thursday. The final list of the 10 candidates was not published.
The committee, headed by Appellate Division judge Justice Obaidul Hassan, had published an initial list of 322 names proposed by the registered political parties, eminent citizens and individuals.
After the panel submitted its list, Hamid said he hoped it would be possible to form a strong and acceptable Election Commission that would be able to hold free and fair polls at the national and local levels.
The new commission will be in charge of the 12th parliamentary elections.
For a long time, political parties had urged the passing of a constitutional law to govern the formation of the Election Commission.
In the absence of a law, the power to appoint election commissioners was vested in the president in line with the constitution.
The late president Zillur Rahman had formed the Election Commission by selecting a committee to shortlist names of possible candidates for the posts of the election commissioners and their chief.
Hamid had followed suit the next time to appoint CEC KM Nurul Huda and the commissioners from the names recommended by the search committee. Their tenure ended earlier this month.
New election commissioners (clockwise from top left) Rashida Sultana Emily, Ahsan Habib Khan, Anisur Rahman and Md Alamgir.New election commissioners (clockwise from top left) Rashida Sultana Emily, Ahsan Habib Khan, Anisur Rahman and Md Alamgir.But, amid political parties' discussion with the president regarding the formation of the search panel, the cabinet approved a new draft of a law on the formation of the EC. The law was passed in parliament on Jan 27 - a swift drafting and passage that generated much public discussion.
To be recommended for the post of Election Commissioner, the new law says that an individual must fulfil three requirements: they must be a Bangladeshi citizen, he or she must be at least 50 years old, and they must have at least 20 years of work experience in any important government, judicial, semi-government or private job.
The EC helmed by Huda can claim credit for bringing all the political parties to the 2018 parliamentary polls after the boycott of the 2014 elections by the BNP and its allies. But the 2018 polls were marred by allegations of ballot-box stuffing the night before voting.
The EC was blamed for creating voter apathy after low turnouts in some elections. Local government polls, mostly union council elections, also saw deadly violence during the last commission.
Huda regretted the violence, but blamed it on the intolerance among parties and their candidates, saying the commission has no control over that.
While similar allegations were levelled at its predecessor, infighting that often played out publicly was unique to the Huda-led commission. Election Commissioner Mahbub Talukdar made the headlines as an outspoken critic of the electoral process and often found himself at loggerheads with Huda.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
