B Mirror Desk : According to Election Commissioner Brigadier General (Retd) Abul Fazal Md. Sanaullah, approximately 10% of all voters in the nation are foreign nationals. Voting rights are essential for expatriates. Hopefully, we can put everyone’s thoughts into practice. According to him, “expats have never been allowed to vote in Bangladesh’s history. We would like to start small for the first time. Ten percent of our voters are expatriate citizens. Our objective is to increase the number of foreign voters.
He made this statement during a national discussion with experts from a range of political parties, civil society, and prominent journalists on Tuesday morning at the Agargaon Election Bhaban regarding the methodical expatriate voting procedure. The day-long dialogue event is attended by election commissioners, civic society, leaders of numerous political parties, including the BNP, as well as media representatives and concerned officials.
“Out of 178 countries, expatriates from 115 countries can use their voting rights,” he stated at the expatriate seminar. Expats from those nations cast more ballots than citizens in 20% of them. Only national elections are open to foreign voters in these nations.
Election Commission Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said, “If expatriates cannot vote, the voter turnout is affected. The Election Commission is firmly committed to organizing fair and acceptable elections. We want votes in a festive atmosphere. We want to include expatriates in this festival.”
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) AMM Nasir Uddin said at the event that we want to start the process of allowing expatriates to vote through proxy voting. For this, the support and opinions of all political parties are needed. If we do not get political support, the entire process will collapse.
The CEC said, our neighboring country India has not yet introduced proxy voting. In such a context, we want to start the journey of this proxy voting. For this, the Election Commission has already started working with the help of the concerned. This decision has been taken for the socio-economic implementation of the country.
He said, I had promised at the beginning of taking charge that I would arrange for the expatriates to vote in the upcoming elections. The expatriates also met and requested to arrange for the voting. We have discussed this a lot in-house. We have tried to find a system by involving domestic and foreign firms including BUET, DUET, MIST. A decision has to be made by looking at the socio-economic reality of the country and the literacy rate. Experts have proposed after considering everything. We want to move forward with your advice. If we do not get the support of our parties, it will not be implemented.
The Chief Election Commissioner said, we want at least the journey to happen in the next election. Our neighboring country, India, has not yet been able to start it. Many countries have done it. However, we want to at least start it on a limited scale. Representatives of political parties including BNP are present at the seminar.
