Palli News Online Desk:
Voting is underway for the biennial election of the National Press Club Management Committee. Voting will be held from 9 am to 5 pm on Saturday (December 31). A total of 1,218 voters are electing their new leadership for the next two years in this election.
Journalists known as pro-liberation war journalists are contesting in this election, divided into two full panels and one partial panel, while journalists known as pro-BNP and pro-Jamaat journalists are contesting in one full panel.
Fifty candidates have been nominated for the 17-member posts of the executive committee, including the president and general secretary. Voting and counting will be held electronically in this election. Information technology expert Mustafa Jabbar is serving as the chairman of the five-member election management committee. The other members are Md. Mustafa-e-Jamil, Zafar Iqbal, Shah Alamgir and Md. Nasir Uddin.
Current president Muhammad Shafiqur Rahman and Farida Yasmin are contesting for the post of president from a single panel of pro-liberation journalists. Farida Yasmin is a three-time elected member of the Press Club Management Committee. This is the first time in the history of the National Press Club that a female candidate is contesting for the post of general secretary. She was also the first female joint editor in the last election of the Press Club.
A full panel led by MA Aziz and Quader Gani Chowdhury are contesting the post of president and general secretary respectively from the BNP-Jamaat panel. Apart from this, a full panel led by Khandaker Monirul Alam is contesting the post of president. However, it has been claimed that the nomination papers of Abdur Rahman Khan, the general secretary candidate of this panel, have not been received. A partial panel of pro-BNP journalists led by current general secretary Kamrul Islam Chowdhury is also contesting the election.
