After reading the recent articles regarding the voter list, I think it's time for all of us to take a breath and look back. I regularly watch television and saw the press conference of Owen Lippert. The thing that I noticed is that he and others were very upbeat about their findings. Actually I was very happy too. One of the reasons for today's political turmoil is the voter list prepared under MA Aziz. Now it should be a time of relief for both AL and BNP that there was no fabrication or ill intention found in the voter list. Both parties should be happy and relieved just like us the citizens. Duplication due to migration is a problem even in the USA and other developed countries. In the last elections here in the States there were a lot of complaints for voting irregularities. So it's nothing new in Bangladesh or any other country. The encouraging thing is that it was not a planned voter list prepared for manipulation. Up to this everything looked fine but then the next day I read the online newspapers and was totally shocked. Almost everybody had headlines saying "NDI confirmed that there were 1.22 crore fake/false voters in the voter list." This was really not good journalism. Journalists always tell the politicians how to behave and how to tolerate each other but when it comes to themselves some don't think they have the equal responsibility to show restraint. Rather than focusing on how to correct the duplication and praising the EC for not providing a fabricated voter list almost all newspapers focused on portraying it negatively. And that's the reason the next day the US ambassador and others had to clarify the findings again.I was expecting an editorial regarding this but never saw one. Just like the politicians in our country our journalists also can't admit their mistakes. We always tell both the parties to work together and be social to each other but I think we also have a responsibility as citizens to not always fan the differences. Some newspapers and TV channels are doing it regularly. They are fanning the differences. Journalists have a responsibility to be cautious and prudent at this vulnerable time of our country. Let's put the positive important things ahead and negative unimportant things behind so that we as a nation can go ahead.
One other thing I have to mention is that we have to find a way to do some investigative journalism. I as a citizen don't want NDI to come and tell us that our voter list is correct or incorrect. The research that they did can be done by us. I have nothing against NDI or foreign agencies doing it but we should have an independent non-political mechanism to check our voter list.
I really hope that the updated voter list and EC reconstitution will pave the way for a free and fair election in the coming months.
I just pray to everyone to focus on the positives.
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