PR needed to make every vote count, and for fair elections: Jamaat’s Hamidur Rahman Azad

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami Assistant Secretary General AHM Hamidur Rahman Azad on Saturday stressed the need for introducing proportional representation, an electoral system where the distribution of seats in parliament would align with the proportion of total votes received by each party, in a bid to avoid electoral irregularities and ensuring that every vote counts.

"The first and foremost benefit of implementing PR would be that every vote counts, and the voter can thus recognize that he or she is represented in parliament," Hamidur Rahman said, while addressing a seminar in the capital.

The Jamaat leader drew his comparison with the issue of so-called ‘wasted votes’ under the prevailing First-Past-The-Post system, where the votes falling in favour of losing candidates are effectively discarded.

Cosmos Foundation arranged the roundtable titled ‘Election 2026: A Critical Look at Proportional Representation,’ at Malibagh in the capital. UNB was a media partner of the event.  

Reiterating Jamaat’s current stance calling for introducing PR in the upcoming election for th next parliament, be it unicameral or bicameral, Hamidur said people in the PR system vote for the party by its symbol, whereas in the conventional system practiced in most parts of the world, voters choose between parties’ candidates.

This leads to candidates building personal dominance, creates musclemen, spends huge money, resorting to violence, and occupying polling stations, which lead to unfair elections and voters being denied their right to vote in a peaceful atmosphere, he said.

“To come out of these irregularities, PR is a suitable system. Under this system, the competition remains within the party as nominations and funding are controlled by the party itself,” he said, adding that the parties will finalise their list of candidates on the basis of their council elections.

“So there is an opportunity to avoid many irregularities. Making every vote count is number one, and number two is fair elections,” he said.