Adviser: Election system needs complete overhaul

LGRD Adviser AF Hassan Ariff has said that the election process needs to be corrected and brought to a more active and advanced stage, emphasizing the necessity of overhauling the entire polling system.

He made the remarks on Saturday at a national dialogue titled "Democratic Decentralization and Local Government Reform in Light of Public Aspirations," organized by the Governance Advocacy Forum at the CIRDAP Auditorium in the capital.

Highlighting the need to make the election process more active and advanced, Hassan Ariff said: "We have seen elections over the past 15 years, but were those really elections? In short, no. The election system has been completely destroyed. It must be restructured. The responsibility for this has been given to the commission, and it is in capable hands. Badiul Alam Majumder has been working for decades to raise awareness about people's voting rights."

The adviser further said that ensuring transparency in the judicial appointment process is the responsibility of the elected government, those who are in parliament. Therefore, demands should be made to them. Political parties must be approached with these demands, and a roadmap should be obtained from them.

At the same time, he questioned: "Why hasn’t the local government structure improved to match that of developed countries in a hundred years?"

Hassan Ariff added: "The people of this country are quite aware of local government issues. The district council is a very old structure, and it cannot be dismissed easily. Decentralization must happen beyond Dhaka, at the district and sub-district levels."