By Mizan Rahman /Dhaka


The Election Commission will bar top Islamist Jamaat-e- Islami and other political leaders, already convicted or to be convicted on charges of war crimes in 1971 liberation war from contesting the next parliamentary election scheduled to be held in next six months, it was announced here yesterday.
Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad told newsmen that necessary changes would be brought in the Representation of People’s Order (RPO) to debar those convicted by the International Crimes Tribunals from contesting elections.
“We are now reworking the technical aspects of the RPO act to ensure that,” Ahmed said at the end of meeting on amendments to the RPO.
He said, to ban Jamaat-e-Islami for its involvement in 1971 war crimes or not is a decision the Election Commission will take only after the verdict of the special tribunal is closely examined.
“Prior to going through the tribunal’s verdict carefully, it is not possible to speculate on what the Election Commission will do,” said Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad.
He said: “Nothing is possible before we have gone through the copy of the tribunal’s verdict.”
The first war crimes tribunal of Bangladesh had observed that the Jamaat- e-Islami is a “criminal political organisation” in its verdict on the party’s former chief Ghulam Azam last Monday.
The verdict also observed that none opposed to Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 should be allowed to hold a ‘position of importance anywhere in the country’.
The government was asked by the tribunal to ensure that.  In other verdicts on the 1971 war crimes, the two special tribunals have alluded to Jamaat-e-Islami’s complicity with the wartime atrocities on several occasions.
In the death sentence verdict against former Jamaat activist Abul Kalam Azad alias Bacchchu Razakar, the war crimes tribunal had observed “Jamaat’s role in creating armed vigilante groups to protect the unity of Pakistan” and “in atrocities perpetrated against innocent Bengalis”.
“We are all bound to go by the court’s orders. If the Election Commission gets any orders from the court, we will abide by it,” CEC Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmed had said after the Bacchchu Razakar verdict.