Bangladesh Elections

The recent City Corporation and Pourashava election has ended in Bangladesh successfully (except some reports of mismanagement). One limitation was that BNP boycotted the elections although some of their candidates ran independently. The election commission's outlook was to make this election free from political party representations but the court has given a verdict against that only a few days ago.

The European and American diplomats said that "they were impressed by the high turnout and efficient running of local elections" calling the polls "a step in the right direction ahead of December's national polls".

Only recently I noticed a commendable effort from a Bangladesh based NGO (Shushashoner Jonnoy Nagorik -SHUJAN). They have a site in bangla called www.votebd.org which displays all the information of every Candidate who contested in the 4 City Corporaton and 9 Pourashava elections. This is a great resource for voters to decide who is the best candidate for them.

The information available (even in pdf) are:

1. Candidate's Income Tax return information, Sources of Election expenses, Affidevit
   
2. Candidate's Comparison status of every voting area;
3. Corruption news archive with searching capability where from you can find if your candidate is implicated in any corruption;
4. An interactive forum;
5. Documents for study;

Here is a great video from SHUJAN about whom the voters will be casting their vote:



I think this is a great move and this website can be a great resource for voters in the coming elections in Bangladesh.