Editorial
Another election commissioner
It can create more problems than solve
The decision of the government to appoint yet another election commissioner has sent worrying signals across the political spectrum in the country. The surprise came on Thursday when it announced the appointment of a former bureaucrat Mahmud Hasan Monsur as an election commissioner with the attempted justification that the addition would strengthen the Election Commission for holding the coming elections. The move has been taken unilaterally without recourse to any consultation with the opposition. While the burning issues like electoral and caretaker government reforms remain unresolved on the table, the move by the government can neither be viewed as a prudent one nor a helpful one. It is also not clear what good another election commissioner would do to resolve the contentious issues before holding the election in early 2007. Assuming that another election commissioner was needed, would it not have been in the fitness of things for the government to have talked about this with all the political parties, since it wants everyone to take part in the coming election? In fact, it potentially offered an opportunity to the ruling party to open a channel of communication with the other side possibly leading to a wider dialogue. There is no denying that such good gestures are very much needed to bring whiffs of fresh air in our politics. The law may not have stipulated consultation with the opposition or even the exact number of election commissioners to be inducted, yet what stopped the government from following the convention of consultation for the sake of the widest possible acceptability of an appointment? This surely would have gone a long way to defuse tension and generate confidence in the electoral process. It hardly needs emphasising that the government should take strides to resolve issues, not create new ones.
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