A member of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs Grace Meng has called upon Bangladesh’s political parties to work together shunning violence in the way forward.
In a post-election comment, she told journalists that the elections did not reflect the ideals of democracy, by which she meant “fair and open elections”.Grace is the first Asian-American member of Congress from New York, and the first woman Member of Congress from Queens since former Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. She said she was “deeply saddened” by the recent election-related violence in Bangladesh.
“The United States and Bangladesh are based on democratic systems of government and there is nothing more central to democracy than fair and open elections,” she said, sharing the US government’s position. “Moving forward, leaders of all political parties must work together without sacrificing public safety,” she said.
The Jan 5 election has been widely criticised by the international community particularly by the West, as the main opposition BNP boycotted the poll, resulting in more than half the seats returning uncontested winners. The US has been open in calling for fresh elections “as soon as possible” with an agreed solution.
Hours after an official statement on Monday, the State Department’s Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf in a press briefing in Washington said the US believed Bangladesh “still has an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to democracy by organising free and fair elections that are credible in the eyes of the Bangladeshi people”.
“We did note that we were disappointed by the recent parliamentary elections, especially because so many of the seats were uncontested or only had token opposition,” she reiterated US’s position.
“Obviously, we believe going forward things should be done very differently,” she said. The US did not send observers to monitor the elections on the ground.
Harf, however, said they made the statement based on the fact that more than half of the seats were uncontested, and most of the remainder offered only token opposition.
“Obviously, you don’t need to have an observer at a polling place to see that,” she said.-bdnews24.com
