Ruling Awami League candidate Arfanul Haque was declared elected as the new mayor of Cumilla City Corporation an hour after vote-counting was suspended amid a clash and chaos on Wednesday.
Returning officer Shahedunnabi announced that Arfanul bagged 50, 310 votes while his nearest rival Monirul Haque Sakku, an independent candidate, secured 49, 967 votes after counting of votes in all 105 centres.
Sakku alleged that he was made to lose after a conspiracy between the election commission and the ruling Awami League.
As he was going to win the poll, the vote counting was deliberately suspended after the announcement of the results of 101 centres out of 105, Sakku said in his immediate reaction.
‘It proves the nexus between the election commission and the government,’ he said.
Returning officer Shahedunnabi defended their decision of suspending the announcement of results for the time being saying that they had to do it as presiding officers in some centres were taking time to provide them with the EVM results.
Police charged batons to disperse the supporters of Arfanul and Sakku as they were engaged in a clash after the announcement of results was briefly halted.
Voting in the city corporation was earlier marked by low turnout amid rain and the slow pace of Electronic Voting Machines.
EVM complexities and technical glitches left many voters frustrated as they had to wait in queues for long hours to cast their ballots.
The voting started at 8:00am and was supposed to be completed at 4:00pm. But the process continued for some time after the end of the stipulated hour as many people were waiting in queues.
The elections, considered as the first and a major challenge for the new Election Commission, were relatively peaceful with heavy deployment and patrolling of law enforcement agencies, said local administrations and elections officials.
Returning officer Shahedunnabi said that they had to remain alert to prevent violence and untoward incidents.
He said that the authorities had detained and jailed 12 people for different terms through mobile courts for violation of the electoral code of conduct.
The detained are mostly outsiders and some of them tried to cast fake votes.
According to Election Commission, around 60 per cent of voters managed to cast their votes in the city elections.
Chief election commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal said that elections to Cumilla City Corporation, five municipalities and more than 120 union parishads in different districts were held in peaceful and fair manners.
‘Our overall opinion is that the polls to a city corporation, municipalities and union parishads were held in peaceful, fair and uninterrupted manners,’ he said at a post-election press conference at Nirbachon Bhaban in Dhaka.
Cumilla police superintendent Faruk Ahmed said that among the 12 detained, two are students of Cumilla University and the rest are from nearby areas of the city.
Among them, three people were detained at Modern Primary School Polling Centre and one of them was jailed by a mobile court for breaching the election law.
The authorities also detained five other people from Sangrais Government Primary School Polling Centre for violating the electoral code of conduct and attempt to vote-rigging.
SP said that the detained were jailed for not more than seven days by the mobile courts.
Five candidates for mayor, 106 for councillors and 36 for reserved seats for women councillors had contested in the city polls for which 2.29 lakh voters were listed to exercise their voting rights.
Votes were cast on 640 booths in 105 centres.
All the major candidates expressed their satisfaction with the relatively peaceful voting atmosphere.
After casting his vote in the morning, Awami League candidate Arfanul termed the election peaceful and said that he was hopeful about his win.
Former mayor and independent candidate Sakku, who was expelled from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party for contesting the mayoral polls against the party decision, also expressed his hope to win but complained of slow voting.
He said that there were not sufficient centres and booths for the voters.
There are 27 wards and nine reserved seats for women in the city corporation. It is the third election of the Cumilla City Corporation after its formation in 2011.
The presence of the voters in the polling centres was low in the morning due to heavy rain. The voters started to turn up in the centres as the day progressed, but faced hassles from EVM complexities.
It took over 15 minutes for 70-year-old Minati Bala Das to cast her vote at Cumilla High School centre as she could not figure out how to press the button in the EMV machine.
The presiding officer and polling officers could not make her understand how to press buttons in the EVM machine.
Minati Bala had to enter the secret voting room for six times to cast her vote successfully.
The centre's presiding officer Fazlur Rahman said that many people did not understand the process of EMV voting and it consumed a lot of time to make them understand.
The centre also faced a technical glitch for nearly an hour in the morning leading to the suspension of voting for the time being, the presiding officer said.
Voter Shahana Begum said that she had to wait for nearly two and a half hours to cast her vote.
‘It’s annoying and time-consuming. If things continue to happen like this, the people will lose interest in coming to centres,’ she said.
A young female voter, Tuhin, went to cast her vote in the Sangrais Government Primary School polling centre in the morning but failed to get her fingerprint matched in the machine.
‘After repeated attempts, the polling officials told me that it was my bad luck and I should rather leave without casting vote,’ she said.
Chowara Islamia Fazil Madrasa centre presiding officer Mominul Islam said that the elderly and less educated people faced more difficulties in voting through EMVs.
‘It’s not regular papers. People who have eyesight problems also found it difficult to notice buttons in EVMs,’ Mominul said.
In several centres, assistant presiding officers, polling officials or even candidates’ agents were spotted directing voters to cast their votes inside secret rooms.
When approached, returning officer Shahedunnabi admitted that there was a slow pace in voting in EMVs.
He said that they had arranged mock voting, where people hardly participated to understand the voting process in EMVs.
The candidates’ agents were also asked to help the voters to understand the process, but it did not work properly.
He said that senior officials at the EC were aware of the voting developments.
Expressing his satisfaction over peaceful voting, Shahedunnabi said no untoward incident happened on this election day. Voter turnout would be more if there was no rain, he said.
Awami League activists dominated the streets in Cumilla city during the voting while supporters of Sakku were hardly noticed.
Some ruling party supporters locked into an argument with the Border Guard Bangladesh at Bishnapur Government Primary School in ward no. 1, prompting the law enforcers to charge batons on them.
Civil society platform Sushashoner Jonno Nagorik Cumilla unit secretary Ali Ahsan Tito said that the polls were relatively peaceful given the context of recent elections in the country.
He said that many people feared violence during the elections which might have contributed to the low turnout of voters.
Ali Ahsan said that Bangladeshi voters were not technologically sound, which caused difficulties in elections through EVMs. The EC must consider the difficulties while deciding about the mechanism for upcoming elections, he said.
