Amid the fast-approaching general election, the ruling Awami League appears to finalise its nominations for the polls within the next three days. “We’re working on that…I think, it’ll take three days to finalise the nominations,” AL Parliamentary Board (ALPB) member Kazi Zafarullah told journalists over phone on Tuesday evening. Kazi Zafarullah, also an AL presidium member, said the ALPB is preparing the nominations division-wise after examining the papers and documents. The country’s 10th parliamentary polls will be held on January 5. Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad announced the schedule for the national election in a televised address to the nation on Monday evening. As per the polls schedule, the deadline for submission of nomination papers is December 2 and the scrutiny of the nomination papers is on December 5 and 6. The last date for withdrawal of candidature is December 13. The election symbols will be allocated among the candidates on December 14. The ALPB under the leadership of AL chief and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will also sit with its 14-party alliance parties for seat sharing. The ALPB members are party chief Sheikh Hasina, Sajeda Chowdhury, Tofail Ahmed, Suranjit Sengupta, Obaidul Quader, Kazi Zafarullah, Dr Alauddin Ahmed and party general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam. Zafarullah said the ALPB is crosschecking the names that came from various survey reports and from the grassroots leaders. He also said it is a huge task to find out appropriate candidates from around 2,600 nomination seekers. According to the party sources, the AL chief has had the survey reports and recommendations of the grassroots leaders in her hand, and she will go through these documents before finalising the party nominations. This time the party will select more than one candidate in each constituency to avert any possible problems just ahead of the election time. Last time, the party took interviews of the party hopefuls, but this time there will be no interview. Party sources said the Awami League recently conducted several surveys to have the real picture of the party across the country. These surveys also had the information about the present MPs in their areas and the future leaders. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina while speaking in grassroots leaders’ meetings to get the recommendations from them said the recommendations and the survey reports will help the party choose its appropriate candidates for the next general election. In those meetings, all the grassroots leaders were given one page of paper to write down their desired leaders’ names. Each of them was asked to write down three names that they wanted to see as the MP candidate from their respective constituencies. The AL might not declare their candidate from all the 300 constituencies of the country as it has to sacrifice some seats for the other parties of the 14-party. The Prime Minister at a meeting with the nomination aspirants on November 24 at her official residence Ganobhaban also hinted that. – UNB
