School students first cast ballots

Adarsha High School in Mirpur wore a festive look yesterday with its building decorated with colourful handwritten posters seeking votes.

The campus was abuzz with activities since the morning as the students stood for election for the first time in their lives yesterday.

They themselves performed the tasks of polling agents, presiding officers, voters and candidates. They carried out all the duties and voters elected representatives to form the first ever students' cabinets, literally in a free and fair election.

The school is not the only institution which saw such an election. In 1,043 secondary schools, madrasas and technical institutions of 487 upazilas and eight cities, the elections were arranged on a pilot basis in efforts to inculcate democratic norms in children and develop their leadership qualities.

The voting began at 8:00am and continued till 1:00pm where some 8,344 students were elected representatives to the eight-member cabinets.

After the election, one of the members of the cabinet will be elected as the prime minister by voice vote. He or she will distribute portfolios among the cabinet members, emulating a parliamentary democracy.

The students' cabinets will work for the improvement of school environments. The tenure of the cabinets will be six months.

Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid visited Adarsha High School to see the elections. Terming the voting peaceful, he said, "There is a need to inculcate the values of democracy and respect opinions of each other in the students' minds as they would be the future leaders."

Asked whether the government has any plan to hold elections to the universities, he said the universities are run by their own acts and they cannot put pressure on them.

Soumen, a class VIII student of Adarsha High School and a candidate, said he would like to work along with the teachers for the development of his  school. "I would cooperate even if I lost."

Khorshed Alam, headmaster of the school, said the school bore the expenses for ballot boxes and nomination papers. Around 1,200 students took part in the polls at his school.