Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami on Sunday strongly protested the one-year contractual appointment of Md Samsul Alam as additional secretary of the Election Commission Secretariat, warning that it posed an “extreme threat” to neutral elections.
In a statement issued on 26 July, Jamaat Secretary General and former MP Mia Golam Porwar said the Election Commission was a sensitive constitutional institution whose credibility depended on absolute neutrality and public confidence.
He alleged that Samsul Alam had previously been openly and directly involved in various Bangladesh Nationalist Party activities and had held an important position on a BNP committee after his retirement.
“Appointing such an active politician to a sensitive institution like the Election Commission is a severe betrayal of the goal of holding free, fair and neutral elections,” Porwar said.
He said legal provisions existed to compensate officials who had been unfairly deprived during their careers, but bringing a 67-year-old person who had joined active BNP politics after retirement into the Election Commission was “entirely unacceptable”.
Porwar said the additional secretary had a direct and crucial role in managing the forthcoming local government elections and questioned whether neutral polls could be held under an official who had openly promoted the agenda of a particular political party.
The statement also referred to the reaction of the BNP’s official media cell, alleging that it had celebrated the “controversial appointment” in a festive manner.
Porwar claimed the reaction clearly indicated a “conspiracy” to once again turn the Election Commission into an institution subservient to the BNP.
Jamaat urged the government to cancel the appointment immediately and called for only universally acceptable and completely neutral individuals to be appointed to constitutional bodies, including the Election Commission.
