The Dhaka-based diplomats maintained low key during the Saturday’s city corporation elections and dropped their local staff from the observer teams amid criticism from the government. US Ambassador Earl Miller and British High Commissioner Robert Dickson were seen visiting several polling stations in both South and North city corporations, but did not interact with media.
“This is a beautiful day,” the US ambassador said standing at the playground of the Shaheed Monu Miah Government High School in Tejgaon area and looking around and up in the sky. He also enquired about the school, and suggested a television crew, waiting in front of him, to capture the moment of a senior citizen walking towards the polling centre. The person later identified him as Mohammed Shahjalal, 72 years old. He also visited Rampura Ekramunnesa High School in the morning.
The British High Commissioner was seen visiting polling centres at Banani Bidyaniketan School and College and Azimpur Girls School and College. He did not make any comment about the election. No Bangladeshi staff of the embassies was seen accompanying them. A diplomat of a Western embassy told Bangladesh Post that they dropped their local staff from the observer teams after the foreign ministry’s letter.
The foreign ministry, earlier, in a letter to the missions asked them not to include their local employees who are Bangladeshi citizens as part of the election observer teams. Of the total 74 foreign observers on an EC list, 28 were Bangladeshis working in various foreign missions.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after casting her vote in the morning also criticised the foreign missions for registering Bangladeshi nationals working in those missions as foreign observers. “How they (Bangladeshis) became foreign observers? They’re working there (in the missions). The missions cannot send them as foreign observers and they didn’t do right work,” she lambasted.