Two non-government organisations (NGOs) have raised concerns about the objectivity of election observers, who termed the recent local government polls "fair and credible," after they worked with the Election Commission to assist in voter awareness and registration campaigns, reports bdnews24.com.
The Election Working Group (EWG), an umbrella group of NGO observers, received over $2.0 million for their assistance, while the same NGOs turned observers and assessed the EC's performance in holding the city corporation and municipality polls, they said. NGOs Janipop and Odhikar, who had been two partners of the 33-member EWG, have protested the "conflict of interest" and refrained from working as "agents of the EC" for voter registration activities.
"We protested the EWG decision of working as an agent of the EC to take voters to the registration centre, because we believed such work would hamper the independence of election monitoring," acting director of Odhikar Nasiruddin Elan told the news agency Thursday.
Top polls monitoring group FEMA however has a different point of view.
"We worked as the agents of the donor (The Asia Foundation), not of the Election Commission," Munira Khan, president of FEMA, told the news agency.
FEMA (Fair Election Monitoring Association) was one of the component NGOs of the EWG to take part in the voter registration activities.
Human rights organisation Odhikar opposed the awareness campaign activities from the very beginning, saying the EWG should be restricted to election observation and monitoring only.
Nasiruddin said that it was not possible for the NGOs to observe the polls impartially while it received monetary benefits from such electoral activities.
"Janipop was first in favour of assisting in the EC's awareness campaigns by taking people to voting centres, but later it refrained from taking part in such activities and only acted as observers," Janipop chairman Prof Dr Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah told the news agency.
The Asia Foundation formed the EWG in the middle of 2006 as a common platform for observing the national elections scheduled for Jan 22, 2007.
The EWG signed a memorandum of understanding last year with the EC to undertake voter awareness activities, including guiding people to voter registration centres and other works.
Election Commissioner Mohammad Sohul Hossain told the news agency Thursday: "The EWG did sign the MoU with the EC to take voters to the registration centres."
Hossain said the working group received the funds for its works, according to the MoU, from the Asia Foundation.
Jerome Sayre, assistant representative of the Asia Foundation, told the news agency: "The Asia Foundation through the EWG spent about $2.0 million in assisting the Election Commission in the voters' registration programme."
