USA may learn from Bangladesh elections: CEC

Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda today turned down BNP’s suggestion to take lesson from the recently concluded US elections and said the country also needs to learn from Bangladesh elections.

“The USA can’t count votes in four to five days while we count it in four to five minutes. So, the United States needs to learn from us,” the CEC told reporters after casting his vote in the by-polls of Dhaka-18 parliamentary constituency this noon.

Referring to the recently elections of the United States, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Tuesday asked both the government and the Election Commission to take a lesson from the US presidential election.

CEC Huda, hinting about the suggestions, said, “We have need to learn from the good aspects of the United States elections, alongside,  the United States needs to learn from us.”   

He said the by-elections are going on smoothly as no untoward incident takes place anywhere in the electoral area during the elections.

Responding to a query over the low turnout of voters in the election, he said he does not know anything in this regard.

“There may be many equations for poor turnout of voters in the elections and experts can clarify the matter,” the CEC said.

A total of six candidates are contesting in the elections. The contenders are Awami League nominated Md Habib Hasan, BNP nominated SM Jahangir Hossain, Jatiya Party's Nasir Uddin Sarkar, Gono Front's Kazi Md Shahidullah, Bangladesh Congress's Omar Faruk and PDP's Mobibullah Bahar.

Soon after beginning of the voting, BNP candidate SM Jahangir Hossain alleged that his agents are being driven out of the polling centres by the ruling party men forcibly.

When asked, Huda said, “His (BNP candidate) allegation is not true.”

“A BNP leader called me around 9:30am and wanted to come to my commission office to talk about the election irregularities. I was waiting my office till 11:00am but no one of them comes to me with any allegation,” the CEC said.