The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Saturday held a virtual meeting with a visiting four-member team of election experts from the European Union.
The ream arrived in Dhaka on November 29 to observe the January 7 national election.
BNP standing committee member Abdul Moyeen Khan led the meeting from BNP’s side along with another standing committee member Nazrul Islam Khan, BNP media cell said.
Election expert David Noel Ward led the EU team.
The three other members of the visiting team are—electoral analysts Alexandre Mattus and Swibes Charlotte, and legal expert Rebecca Cox.
The BNP said that at the meeting they discussed about the government’s move to hold another one-sided election, repressing the opposition and arresting thousands of BNP leaders and activists including the party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.
The EU delegates is likely to hold meetings with the Election Commission and several ministries this week.
In July, an EU exploratory mission visited Bangladesh. Weeks after the visit, the EU announced that it would not send a fully-fledged election observation mission as it had doubts about the conduciveness of the electoral environment. The EU, however, said it would send a four-member mission late last month.
The United States-based International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute have announced they will deploy a joint team to conduct a limited technical assessment of violence before, during, and after the election.
The team will include five long-term analysts who will stay in Bangladesh for six to eight weeks.
