TIB's report is 'one-sided and anti-government'

Awami League General Secretary and Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader on Thursday said that the report of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) on the recently held 12th parliamentary election is "one-sided and anti-government, report agencies.

"They (TIB) are agents of BNP," he said at a press briefing at the Awami League president's office in Dhaka's Dhanmondi in the afternoon.

"TIB speaks in the tune of BNP. History says that they were always against Awami League. They speak for BNP. We could not find impartiality of their research," said the AL leader.

The press briefing was attended by AL Organising Secretary BM Mozammel Haque, SM Kamal Hossain, Sujit Roy Nandi, among other leaders.

Another report says: Criticising the Transparency International Bangladesh's (TIB) report on the January 7 election, Foreign Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud on Thursday said the wise quarters observed that it was made in an effort to "give weapon" to anti-election and anti-democratic forces including BNP.

"There is resemblance in terms of language between BNP and TIB so that many raised questions whether TIB made the report with the support of a certain quarter," he told the journalists at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in the city.

The foreign affairs minister said it seemed that TIB came up with its report with refined remarks what have been made by BNP's senior joint secretary general Rizvi Ahmed at his daily press briefing.

He hoped that TIB will not turn into a spokesperson of a certain group and anti-election and anti-democratic forces.

The minister said though TIB always claimed that its reports are based on research work, in most of the cases they held the press briefing based on some shallow matters, reports of some newspapers and promptly collected some data.

Another report adds: Sharply criticising a TIB report published on Wednesday, State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Mohammad Ali Arafat on Thursday said TIB (Transparency International Bangladesh) didn't follow any international criteria for making report on the 12th parliamentary election.

"The TIB has done the research within 10 days of the national election and reached to many conclusions. I don't know how it is possible to conduct the research within a short period," he told journalists at a press briefing at his office at secretariat in the city.

The state minister said the TIB claimed that they randomly selected 50 constituencies out of 299 for the research, but the report has no reflection of the actual facts of the polling.