Word: bangladesh
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Despite lofty rhetoric about progress and equality, the United States and Harvard lag well behind global averages in female political participation rates. Countries as varied as Bangladesh, Great Britain, and Turkey have all had female heads-of-state, but we have not. The global average female participation rate at a parliamentary level is 16.3 percent, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The U.S. House—which currently has its highest number of female members ever, 71—only meets this percentage of 16.3 percent. The Senate’s female participation rate is an equally low 16 percent...
Elections in Bangladesh can be unruly affairs: The run-up to the national poll of January 22 has already seen demonstrations, riots, soldiers on the street and the threat of a boycott by one of the two main political parties. It doesn't help that the leaders of those two parties haven't spoken to each other in years. Or that Bangladesh is one of the most corrupt countries in the world according to Transparency International. Still, last week while reporting on the elections in Bangaldesh's capital Dhaka, I came across an interesting use of technology that should help...
...First, the background: As usual, the elections pits Bangladesh Nationalist Party led by Khaleda Zia, widow of assassinated President Ziaur Rahman, against the Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Bangladesh's first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. These have alternated in government every five years since military rule ended in 1991, with the BNP forming the most recent government. Bangladesh's constitution, however, requires that the incumbent party steps down a few months before an election and hands the reins to a neutral caretaker government to run the country and oversee the electoral commission, until the next government...
...Muzaffer Ahmad, head of Transparency International Bangladesh, is more suspicious. He wants to know why people who were on the list and voted in 2001 have had their names removed. He also wants the updated list to be made public as one roll so he and his colleagues can compare it against the old roll before polling day. And that's where technology comes in: With the electoral commission seemingly intent on posting the roll piece by piece in each polling center, Ahmad and a group of democracy campaigners are turning to the Internet for help. The group, which goes...
...thousands of computer savvy volunteers around the country, millions of people can still compare their voting registration information and then lodge a complaint if there are any problems. In much of the world, such basic information would normally be published by national electoral commissions. Ahmad says Shujan has offered Bangladesh's commission help "but they do not want to be helped." Ahmad also says that when the project first started a year ago, he got offers of aid from large foreign donors, but turned them all down. "This is our problem," the economist turned corruption-buster told me. "We have...