Even as most Western states will not send poll observers to Bangladesh for the forthcoming January 7 general elections, India will be represented by three senior officials from the country’s Election Commission.
All of them will arrive in Dhaka on January 4 on the same Air India flight and will be lodged at the five-star Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel, one of the most upscale hotels in the Bangladesh capital.
China will also be represented by three officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They are: Chen Wei, Counsellor, Department of Asian Affairs, Hu Xiaofei and Zhu Jiayuan.
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Russia will have in place four election observers. They include Andrei Shutov, Member of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, and two Political Science professors and a counsellor from the Russian embassy in Dhaka.
While India and China’s official position is that it “elections in Bangladesh are that country’s internal affairs”, Russia earlier last month made strong remarks against the United States, especially targeting the American Ambassador to Dhaka, Peter D Haas, for trying to “meddle in Bangladesh’s elections”.
The election process, beginning with the declaration of the poll schedule on November 15, has been marked by serious irregularities, including allowing “dummy” Awami League candidates contesting the polls as “independent” nominees and forcible inclusion of the Jatiya Party, besides the questionable means adopted to push other fringe parties in the electoral fray.
Indeed, the name of at least one Indian official went public for playing a role in inducing the Jatiya Party to contest an election over which the party had strong reservations.
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Not just political machinations, the ruling Awami League has also resorted to other forms of coercive measures, including the forced ouster of “independent” candidates who might otherwise have posed serious electoral challenges to the party’s official nominees.
This apart, the elections to the 12th Jatiya Sangshad has been marked with widespread violence across most districts of the country.
While the US did not send any election observers, representatives of two American think tanks – International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute – will be keeping a keen eye on pre- and post-election violence.
