We wonder whether the Chief Election Commissioner was talking about the recently concluded six-phase elections in Bangladesh or some other election in some other country when, commenting to the press he said, among other things, that he believed the last phase of the election was better than the previous one, that it was an improvement compared to the previous phases and that, barring some odd instances, the polling was held peacefully. May be he was not aware of the fact that more than 30 people were killed in the run up to the sixth phase of the election alone, bringing the tally of death in the union parishad elections to 125, not to speak of the more than thousand injured. 

When it comes to the lives of human beings, comparisons are odious. And certain things are measured in the absolute and not comparatively, election is one such thing. We are afraid the Election Commission had taken no lessons of the previous phases of the Union Parishad elections, and if it did it was either unable or unwilling to take any remedial measures. To attribute the election violence to the trend of increasing social hostility is inappropriate. Even if we were to take his contention as true, was it not for him then to resort to suitable measures to ensure that that did not spill over and affect the elections? 

Election is not confined to the day of polling. It seems that the commission was content with providing logistics only for the Election Day and remained quite unconcerned with the other aspects like submission of nomination, electioneering code violation and pre-poll violence. And by doing so it abdicated its primary responsibility.