Students holding placards during a rally to mark International Anti-Corruption Day at Dhaka University, in Dhaka yesterday. International Anti-Corruption Day is observed on December 9.

By Mizan Rahman
Dhaka
Election symbols allocated to women candidates in the upcoming municipal election across Bangladesh have come under attack from different quarters including the National Human Rights Commission ((NHRC).
Criticising the election commission (EC) for showing ‘discrimination’ to women councillors in allocating electoral symbols, NHRC chairman Mizanur Rahman yesterday said the EC’s attitude is actually the reflection of the society, where discrimination is deep-rooted.
He termed the allocation of discriminatory symbols to the women councillors in the upcoming municipality elections as ‘ridiculous’.
The election commission designated symbols like gas stove, bangle, chocolate, doll, frock, scissors, handbag, bee, grape and harmonium as election symbols for reserved women candidates in the upcoming municipal election.
Out of 234 mayor posts in as many municipalities, the ruling Awami League (AL) nominated only seven women while the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) picked just one for the December 30 polls.
However, Jatiya Party (JP), Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, and Workers Party did not pick a single woman for mayor posts.
The AL, BNP and JP nominated 564 mayor hopefuls, while 17 other parties gave tickets to 147 aspirants.
As many as 1,223 mayor candidates filed nominations to contest the municipality elections. Of them, 711 will take part in the polls on party tickets while the rest as independents.
For the first time in the country’s history, the municipality polls are going to be held on partisan lines.
Although 2,661 women filed nominations to vie for 733 reserved posts of councillors, only around 20 did so for mayoral posts, according to EC statistics.
A total of 20 political parties registered with the EC are contesting the municipality polls. Of them, seven small parties fielded one mayor candidate each, but none of them were women.
Following reforms in the electoral law in 2008, all registered political parties included a provision in their charters stating that they would have 33% women leaders in all their party committees by 2020. The move was aimed at empowering women politically.
Talking to newsmen, AL presidium member Nooh-ul-Alam Lenin said, “During the selection process, we assessed popularity and competence of our mayor hopefuls as ensuring victory for the party candidates is our main target. Therefore, we didn’t consider the gender issue.”
BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said women leaders were not interested in contesting the polls as the country’s political situation is ‘different’ now.
“Given the present political situation, the party’s women leaders didn’t appear keen to take part in the mayoral polls,” he added.
Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal and Workers Party said they did not pick enough women for mayoral posts as they received poor response from them.
Educationalist Rasheda K Chowdhury said most of the political parties talk about women empowerment, but they act in contrary to what they say.
“It’s surprising that even the left-leaning parties, who are more vocal in women empowerment, didn’t pick a single woman for mayor,” added the former adviser to a caretaker government.
“It’s true that we won’t be able to change the present situation overnight due to our socio-economic condition. But the political leaders are yet to start the process to bring a change,” she observed.