Staff Reporter:
President Md Shahabuddin yesterday said he will provide optimum support and cooperation to the Elec-tion Commission (EC) to make the upcoming 13th national elections and referendum free, fair and meaningful.
EC Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said this while briefing reporters at Nirbachan Bhaban in city’s Agargaon this afternoon.
Earlier, in the morning, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) AMM Nasir Uddin met President Sha-habuddin at Bangabhaban to discuss the overall preparations of the Commission and the announcement of the schedule for the 13th parliamentary elections and referendum.
Election Commissioners – Abdur Rahmanel Masud, Begum Tahmida Ahmad, Md Anwarul Islam Sarker and Brigadier General (Retd) Abul Fazal Md Sanaullah and EC Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed accom-panied the CEC.
Briefing reporters, Akhtar Ahmed said the CEC called on the President yesterday to discuss the pre-election preparations and other issues.
“The President has told us that the Election Commission is moving forward and he will provide whatev-er support he can give for a good, fair and meaningful election. This was basically the topic of yester-day’s discussion,” he said.
The EC secretariat said the CEC informed the President about the update of the voter list and the latest status of political party registration.
During the meeting, he said, the President wanted to know the details of how the EC will organise the elections and the referendum on the same day, how the ballot papers are being prepared, what will be colour of ballot papers, how those will be provided to voters, how much time a voter would take to vote and what is the method of vote counting.
After the Election Commission informed the President in detail about all the issues, the President ex-pressed satisfaction over the overall preparations of the Commission, Akhtar Ahmed said.
He said the President was very interested in postal voting and out of his curiosity he asked some ques-tions about it and wanted to know its procedural structure and technical issues.
The President was very happy to hear that experts would work on all these issues, while the EC informed the President of all these issues in detail, he said.
The EC secretary said the CEC’s speech will be recorded at 4 pm yesterday. To this end, a letter was sent to Bangladesh Television (BTV) and Bangladesh Betar earlier, he added.
