Tasmiah Nuhiya Ahmed of DOT : Quoting Hero Alam, “Hundreds of people surround me where ever I go. They desperately want to take a selfie with me on their phones. The situation goes out of control whenever I go outside. I did not know before that they love me this much. The situation will uncontrollable even further if I go outside with my ‘Heroines’ (actresses). That is why I do not want them to get involved in electioneering for me even though they are very much willing to”.
Muhammad Zubair, a researcher of law wrote in one his articles published in Daily Our Time wrote that – “The members of parliament are regarded as the ‘Law Maker’ of the republic. It is desirable that the persons entrusted with the power of making laws should have highest echelon of education and quality as well to represent the people properly.
Surprisingly, though our Constitution in article 66 and the Representation of the People Order, 1972 in article 12 have made a long-tail of disqualifications of a person to contest in parliamentary election, these two instruments enumerated only two qualifications on the other hand, namely- the person needs to be a citizen of Bangladesh and has attained the age of twenty-five years. Notably, the educational requirements of the contestants are absent there. The only provision in this regard is made in clause (3b) of article 12 of the Representation of the People Order, 1972 which was inserted by the Representation of the People (Amendment) Order, 2008. It mandates that, the nomination paper shall be delivered along with an affidavit signed by the candidate which shall include, along with other documents, an attested copy of the certificate of highest education of the candidate. This only requires from the candidate the certificate of his highest degree of education, without mentioning the minimum level of required education to contest in the parliamentary election”.
This lacuna in the educational requirement of the candidates leaves an ample opportunity for people with less educational qualities to partiucipate in election and become a law maker.
Muhammad Zubair further stated in his article that – for the absence of minimum educational qualification requirement, we see that the people of Bangladesh are often represented by members who are not well-educated. Most interestingly, they often cite in the certificate ‘self-educated’ as their educational qualification. Although there is no wrong with this to become a ‘self-educated’ person, but the problem arises as any person can
claim himself/herself as self-educated since there is no ascertaining mechanism in this regard…. It is quite ridiculous that whereas one needs to have years of training and standard-education even to supervise a shop, to run a workshop, to argue before the court; the legislatures of the country need not any particular level of education to participate in the act of legislating and running the government machinery.
Now, a candidate of the upcoming election is making comments that are humiliating to the female actresses of film media. His comments imply that he has lack of understanding regarding the importance of the position that he is going to hold, if he wins. Without proper background check and without being reasonably convinced that a candidate is fit for becoming a member of parliament, how we can allow a candidate to participate in the election? Do we want our country to be led by people who make lame comments publicly? Tasmiah Nuhiya Ahmed is the Executive Editor, Daily Our Time.