I got a chance to wear the "official card" and be part of the process of voting. Let me share few things I came across.
I applied to give a helping hand in this historical election via Faculty of Education (FE)as they put a nice advertisement asking to use this golden opportunity. Though they put an advertisement, they dealt with it in a very irresponsible and unprofessional manner. The many forms that students of FE filled were held without submitting to Elections Commission in FE till the due date passed.hmmm guess a good step towards democracy from our going to be university. So i got a chance to join on the evening of election day.
Anyway...i went to Dharubaaruge at 19:30 ON 8TH Oct. First few hours for eating drinking and yea...toilet too...
Then came the time..we were asked to go to elections commission. Its was to take a polling booth to Villingili( Villinmale' according to them). There I saw everything in jeopardy. We were asked to take a polling box and two poll booths there. Believe me they were searching for the list of voter even then(00:30 around 3hrs after the time set to close the poll). Then we went to Villingili ferry terminal and found that there wasn't any launch and had to spend a lot of time there. We reached Villingil and called the person whom according to the election commission will be waiting to receive us. The answer was simple...how can I leave this place and go to jetty now? Quiet sensible dho..as he was in charge of election there. That makes sense but the other part of the conversation seems very interesting to me. Here I am talking about 3 guys and 3girls(non of them attended the election training) taking a ballet box, two voting booths and the documents of voting and waiting at Villingili jetty for a vehicle at 2:00 midnight. Yet we were asked to carry it. come on. Not a point of the distance. But does it really makes sense when we carry ballet boxes and voting booths on our shoulders as if our grandmothers carried Dharubondi?? Whatever we went as they asked.
Oh my God..it was 2:00 and I was shocked to see as many as 400 people packed inside the small area waiting to vote. That was OK. But will you not laugh when I tell you that they had one extra ballet box and they told that they will not be using that even. So just guess how organized when they send still another box!!! no comments from me!
Election went till 4:20 and i felt that the list was almost useless, as no one had to worry if they were registered or not. Guess even you would have been able to vote a couple of times if you tried...hahaha;. Then I saw a wonderful session of sleeping. Not just the observers but most of the people who were organizing the ballot too. Maybe because there were 15 police in that small area:p. After 4long hours of waiting and sleeping, counting began at 8:45. I did see that the counting was quite transparent. Just will tell you one thing that I noticed. Maybe I am not as good as them in reading. But when I read the notice fixed outside the voting area, what I understood is that the tick must be put inside the box. There was very clearly a box shown inside which we were supposed to tick when we vote. But I found that they did count the votes with the tick on the logo of the candidate(opposite to box). I read the note several times yet found no means to say that it is a right decision. huh I am too a small guy for decision making dho..
I applied to give a helping hand in this historical election via Faculty of Education (FE)as they put a nice advertisement asking to use this golden opportunity. Though they put an advertisement, they dealt with it in a very irresponsible and unprofessional manner. The many forms that students of FE filled were held without submitting to Elections Commission in FE till the due date passed.hmmm guess a good step towards democracy from our going to be university. So i got a chance to join on the evening of election day.
Anyway...i went to Dharubaaruge at 19:30 ON 8TH Oct. First few hours for eating drinking and yea...toilet too...
Then came the time..we were asked to go to elections commission. Its was to take a polling booth to Villingili( Villinmale' according to them). There I saw everything in jeopardy. We were asked to take a polling box and two poll booths there. Believe me they were searching for the list of voter even then(00:30 around 3hrs after the time set to close the poll). Then we went to Villingili ferry terminal and found that there wasn't any launch and had to spend a lot of time there. We reached Villingil and called the person whom according to the election commission will be waiting to receive us. The answer was simple...how can I leave this place and go to jetty now? Quiet sensible dho..as he was in charge of election there. That makes sense but the other part of the conversation seems very interesting to me. Here I am talking about 3 guys and 3girls(non of them attended the election training) taking a ballet box, two voting booths and the documents of voting and waiting at Villingili jetty for a vehicle at 2:00 midnight. Yet we were asked to carry it. come on. Not a point of the distance. But does it really makes sense when we carry ballet boxes and voting booths on our shoulders as if our grandmothers carried Dharubondi?? Whatever we went as they asked.
Oh my God..it was 2:00 and I was shocked to see as many as 400 people packed inside the small area waiting to vote. That was OK. But will you not laugh when I tell you that they had one extra ballet box and they told that they will not be using that even. So just guess how organized when they send still another box!!! no comments from me!
Election went till 4:20 and i felt that the list was almost useless, as no one had to worry if they were registered or not. Guess even you would have been able to vote a couple of times if you tried...hahaha;. Then I saw a wonderful session of sleeping. Not just the observers but most of the people who were organizing the ballot too. Maybe because there were 15 police in that small area:p. After 4long hours of waiting and sleeping, counting began at 8:45. I did see that the counting was quite transparent. Just will tell you one thing that I noticed. Maybe I am not as good as them in reading. But when I read the notice fixed outside the voting area, what I understood is that the tick must be put inside the box. There was very clearly a box shown inside which we were supposed to tick when we vote. But I found that they did count the votes with the tick on the logo of the candidate(opposite to box). I read the note several times yet found no means to say that it is a right decision. huh I am too a small guy for decision making dho..