A delegation of Amar Bangladesh Party, or ABP, met with the US-based International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI) joint election assessment team on Tuesday.

The US team arrived in Dhaka last week to observe pre and post-election violence, including inter and intra-party violence, violence targeting women and other marginalised groups, online harassment, and threats.

Also read: ‘Here to listen, support a transparent and inclusive electoral process’: NDI-IRI mission

The team was represented by Dr. Geoffrey Macdonald, a senior advisor in the Asia Division at the IRI, Nenad Marinkovic, a Security and Physical Violence Expert, and Ivylo Pentchev, an Information Environment Analyst.

ABP delegation was formed by Mojibur Rahman Monju, Member Secretary of the party, Tajul Islam, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, and a Joint Convenor, Asaduzzaman Fuaad, Zubair Ahmed Bhuiyan, both barrister-at-law and Joint Member Secretary, Nasreen Sultana Mily, a barrister-at-law and in-charge of AB Party Women. The meeting lasted for a little over an hour and took place in an uptown area of the capital city.

Initially, the IRI-NDI team was briefed about the AB Party, a new-generation political platform that aspires to base its politics on problem-solving through devising issue-based policies and programs.

Then the discussion moved to the forthcoming election and associated issues. The team was interested to know about the reasons for the denial of electoral registration and updates on the judicial review application outstanding at the High Court division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.

AB Party has been consistent in its call for a non-partisan election-time government to hold a free, fair, participatory, and credible election which simply cannot take place under an incumbent who lacks legitimacy.

Referring to the previous 11 elections, four were largely accepted as credible which were held under a neutral caretaker government when all the incumbents failed to be re-elected, said a press release.