DHAKA: Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, claimed Democracy International’s (DI) survey proved that Awami League government was right by holding January 5 polls as it was able to win the elections.
Joy came up with the observation in a status update on social network site Facebook on Monday night.
Post-elections poll funded by USAID and DFID and carried out by US based Democracy International (DI) shows Awami League would have won the January 5 elections with at least a 5.8 percent margin even if BNP-Jamaat had participated.
The poll survey reads, 2544 citizens nationwide between January 11 and January 15 and was conducted independently of any political party.
Some 42.7 percent said they would have voted for AL and another 0.1 percent for their grand alliance while 35.1 percent said they would have voted for BNP, another 1.6 percent for Jamaat-e-Islami and 0.3 percent for their 4-party alliance.
He said, “This is in contradiction to all polls conducted prior to the elections except for two; on December 3, I had posted on my Facebook page the correctly weighted results of a poll conducted jointly by AL and DI which showed AL at 39.6% and BNP at 34.2%. The AL’s own large sample poll conducted in November, which we never publicized, showed AL at 38%, BNP at 36%. Both of these are consistent with this post-election poll conducted by DI on its own.”
The Premier’s son also said, “I would like to draw attention to two particular groups who made wildly incorrect statements about these elections. A few western embassies and several media outlets claimed voter turnout was either as low as 20% or as high as 30% at the most. They did so without conducting any actual survey or count whatsoever and based simply on guesswork and rumors.”
Joy alleges western diplomats and the media that made these false accusations owe the Election Commission, the Awami League and the people of Bangladesh an apology. Since they were so quick to issue incorrect public statements on the voter turnout they should at least have the decency to issue statements that their previous claims were wrong. Otherwise, it would indicate they deliberately wished to discredit our elections.
“Another issue I would like to draw your attention to are the polls conducted prior to the elections by various groups, mostly Bangladesh media. In particular I want to call out the polls conducted by the two largest newspapers in Bangladesh, Prothom Alo and Daily Star. Both of their polls showed the BNP receiving 50-55% of the vote and the AL receiving just between 25-30%. These polls were not just a little inaccurate; they were wildly off the mark,” Joy mentioned in the status.
He alleged and insisted the Prothom Alo and Daily Star’s polls clearly have no clue on how to conduct polling. Either that, or they deliberately skewed their polls as they were repeatedly demanding these elections not be held. As polls affect public opinion, which has a direct influence on elections and indeed democracy, this should be investigated.
BDST: 1915 HRS, FEB 04, 2014
