EWG reviews observation of polls held from 2013 to 15

The Election Working Group (EWG) held a roundtable on the "State of Elections in Bangladesh" on Mondayat CIRDAP Auditorium in the capital.
The event was moderated by Professor Dr. Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah, member, steering committee, EWG and the welcome note was presented by Mr. Binoy Krishna Mallik, member, steering committee, EWG. Dr. Md. Abdul Alim, Director, EWG made an elaborate presentation and highlighted the observation findings of the 2013 city corporation elections, 2014 parliament election, the 2014 Upazilla elections, and the 2015 city corporation elections that the EWG coalition had closely observed.
In his presentation, Dr. Alim also focused on issues like: delimitation of electoral boundaries, quality of electoral roll, electoral legal framework, electoral violence, election irregularities/fraud, challenges to election observation, and credibility of Bangladesh's elections. At the end, Dr. Alim also put forward some key recommendations to make the elections in Bangladesh more credible. Invited discussants for the event included: 1) Barrister Manzoor Hasan, executive director, South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS), BRAC University, and 2) Brig M. Shakhawat Hussain, former election commissioner.  Barrister Manzoor Hasan thanked Dr. Alim for his detailed presentation and commented that his presentation had covered a wide range of topic and that his analytical framework had added rigor to the findings that were presented in the event.
He emphasized that both qualitative and quantitative analysis are required for the issue being addressed thanked EWG for providing the quantitative data and welcomed different stakeholders to look more deeply into the qualitative aspects and to ask- 'what does these numbers tell us about our current state and why is it so, and what aspects we need to address and prioritize for future'.  
Barrister Manzoor also emphasized that there is a serious trust deficit amongst our political actors today, we are always looking at each other suspiciously. There is trust network, but that is only limited within a Gosthi (family unit) now in Bangladesh.
This is a serious obstacle we have to find a remedy for.
He also mentioned that there has been a paradigm shift in terms of political development in Bangladesh and that we can no longer analyze the political issues with a political framework from the 2008-2013 period.
He thanked EWG for the important findings and recommended a network in India, Loko Niti and to identify their best practices to take forward the work of EWG.
Brig M. Shakhawat mentioned that a separate Boundary Commission for Bangladesh might not be an ideal solution. For Bangladesh, he said that the delimitation is a primary and mandatory task of the commission and the wide difference that we see between voting population amongst the constituencies can be resolved by forming urban and rural constituencies. He reminded that this recommendation was made by the last commission, but it has not gone anyway forward.
He agreed that the financing of the political parties should be made open and accessible from their website and that this is extremely important for the democratic process. He reminded that in the 10th parliamentary election in Bangladesh, there were an incidence where 15-20 polling stations did not register a single vote - the question of why this happened was never pursued by any party.
He also reminded that any report of irregularities that was observed in the 2015 city corporation elections must be inquired by the commission, but we haven't heard anything from the commission regarding the irregularities in the city corporation elections.
Brig M. Shakhawat Hussain said that this there are pockets in Bangladesh where the social stigma does not favor women getting out and registering themselves, and the commission needs to expand its outreach to account for this.
Hasan M Mazumdar, country representative, The Asia Foundation was as the special guest in the event and praised the credible observation work carried out by the EWG.