The European Union (EU) will not send its full-fledged election observation team to Bangladesh during the upcoming national election due to “budget constraints,” said Election Commission (EC) Secretary Md Jahangir Alam on Thursday.
While talking to reporters at the EC secretariat, Jahangir said the chief election commissioner (CEC) received an email from the European Union over their decision.
He said, "The EU informed that they will keep communicating with the EC. They visited our country and talked to many people. They have financial limitations at the time of the election. They will not send a full-fledged polls observation team for this reason.
“But there is a small team in the country now, the EU has not said anything about whether they will do it with the people who are in our country.”
Jahangir said the EU has not expressed any concern about the elections. They also said they will continue to be in touch with the CEC, he said.
The Election Commission received a letter from the European Union on Wednesday as a follow-up to the recent visit by the Election Exploratory Mission.
In July, the mission from the EU had a series of meetings including with the Election Commission and senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Based on the information received from the fact-finding mission, the European Union was supposed to make a final decision on sending a full-fledged Election Observation Mission before the next national election.
The main objective of the Election Exploratory Mission was to assess the “advisability, usefulness and feasibility” of a possible EU Election Observation Mission for the upcoming parliamentary election, according to the EU Mission in Dhaka.
The task of this mission was to assess the scope, planning, budget, logistics and security of the main election observation mission.
The EU delegation met with government representatives, election-related authorities, representatives of the international community, officials of various law enforcement agencies, political leaders, civil society and media representatives during their stay in Bangladesh.
