Strengthening democracy through meaningful election

Since election is a competition through which the citizens elect their popular representatives in all democratic countries for a specific tenure, inclusive or participatory election is considered one of the significant criteria of participatory democracy. In this sense, inclusive election is a crucial need for strengthening democratic norms and value system.
Inclusive election has become a talk of the country when one hundred and fifty four candidates have been declared winners uncontested after the verification of the nomination papers by the election commission ahead of the 10th national parliament election. Among them AL bagged 127 seats, Jatiya Party 21, JSD (Inu) 3, Workers Party 2 and Jatiya Party (Monju) 1; and all of them belong to the AL-led grand alliance. It confirms the victory of the ruling party without voting. Political observers termed this declaration 'selection in the name of election'. They viewed that it will undermine democratic norms and values since the people are deprived of casting vote in more than half of the constituencies. Apart from this, the international community expressed deep concern where the majority of parliamentary candidates got elected without public consent. This is exceptional in the democratic countries in the world.
The records of being elected uncontested has crossed all the previous records in the history of Bangladesh since independence. In the election of 1973 only 11 candidates got elected uncontested whereas in 1979, 1988 and in 1996 the numbers of uncontested winners were 11, 18 and 49 respectively. Furthermore, only 16 political parties are contesting in this upcoming election, which is rare in the history of voting in Bangladesh.
Expert in politics opine that, it will hardly be considered a credible election at home and abroad mainly for two reasons. Firstly, the majority candidates have already declared winners without the casting of ballot and secondly, this national election is going to be held without the participation of the major opposition party BNP. In the state of affairs they suggest that, the election commission must take effective steps for holding a free, fair, credible and inclusive election, a meaningful election. It  is the main job of the EC. To that end, election commission has to create a level-playing field so that all political parties can take part in the election and the people can exercise their democratic rights. Otherwise, this exclusive election will create a bad example in the history of political culture and thus certainly will affect the continuity of the democratic process of this country.
The writer is a senior lecturer of Northern University Bangladesh [email protected]