Controversial Bangladesh poll officials resign
Source: Reuters
(Recasts, adds quotes) DHAKA, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Hopes for a peaceful and credible parliamentary election in Bangladesh brightened on Wednesday after five widely criticised senior officials at the election commission resigned. Officials and analysts saw it as a positive step towards ending a long-running political crisis that forced caretaker authorities to postpone the election planned for late January. They said the departure of the five, whose removal was a key demand of one of Bangladesh's main political groupings, paved the way for the crisis to be resolved soon. "The interim government now has scope to appoint non-partisan and unbiased election commissioners to lead the country through free and impartial elections," Ataur Rahman, president of the Bangladesh Political Science Association, told Reuters. President Iajuddin Ahmed summoned Commission chief Mahfuzur Rahman and his four deputies to the palace after they had defied weeks of public pressure to step down voluntarily. They told the president they would resign if he asked them to do so, the spokesman said. "A new chief election commissioner and two deputies to assist him will be appointed by the president within a day ot two," Mainul Hosein, information and law adviser to the caretaker government, told reporters. A multiparty grouping led by Sheikh Hasina, a former prime minister and chief of the Awami League, had accused the commissioners of bias towards her rival Begum Khaleda Zia, the immediate past premier whose five-year term ended in October. The alliance also charged the commissioners with incompetence for failing to organise an honest and credible election on Jan. 22 as scheduled. No new election date has yet been set. Hasina had vowed not to participate in any election supervised by Rahman and his team. Western governments and the United Nations say an election without the participation of all major parties would be unacceptable. Bangladesh has been racked by political violence since Khaleda handed power to an interim government charged with organising a new election. At least 45 people have been killed in the past three months and hundreds injured.
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