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DHAKA: Bangladesh on Sunday restored the registration of the largest Islamist party, allowing it to take part in elections, more than a decade after it was removed under the now-overthrown government.

The Supreme Court overturned a cancelation of Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration, allowing it to be formally listed as a political party with the Election Commission.

“The Election Commission is directed to deal with the registration of that party in accordance with law,” commission lawyer Towhidul Islam said.

Jamaat-e-Islami party lawyer, Shishir Monir, said the Supreme Court’s decision would allow a “democratic, inclusive and multi-party system” in the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people.

“We hope that Bangladeshis, regardless of their ethnicity or religious identity, will vote for Jamaat, and that the parliament will be vibrant with constructive debates,” Monir told journalists.

After Sheikh Hasina was ousted as prime minister in August, the party appealed for a review of the 2013 high court order banning it.

Sunday’s decision comes after the Supreme Court on May 27 overturned a conviction against a key leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, A.T.M. Azharul Islam.

Islam had been sentenced to death in 2014 for rape, murder and genocide during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.

Jamaat-e-Islami supported Islamabad during the war, a role that still sparks anger among many Bangladeshis today.

They were rivals of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League, who would become Bangladesh’s founding figure.

Hasina banned Jamaat-e-Islami during her tenure and cracked down on its leaders.

In May, Bangladesh’s interim government banned the Awami League, pending the outcome of a trial over its crackdown on mass protests that prompted her ouster last year.

MEXICO CITY: Mexico is holding its first ever judicial elections on Sunday, stirring controversy and sowing confusion among voters still struggling to understand a process set to transform the country’s court system.
Mexico’s ruling party, Morena, overhauled the court system late last year, fueling protests and criticism that the reform is an attempt by those in power to seize on their political popularity to gain control of the branch of government until now out of their reach.
“It’s an effort to control the court system, which has been a sort of thorn in the side” of those in power, said Laurence Patin, director of the legal organization Juicio Justo in Mexico. “But it’s a counter-balance, which exists in every healthy democracy.”
Now, instead of judges being appointed on a system of merit and experience, Mexican voters will choose between some 7,700 candidates vying for more than 2,600 judicial positions.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum and party allies have said the elections are a way to purge the court system of corruption in a country that has long faced high levels of impunity. Critics say the vote could damage democracy and open the judicial system up further to organized crime and other corrupt actors hoping to get a grip on power.
That process has only grown more chaotic in the run-up to the vote.
Civil society organizations like Defensorxs have raised red flags about a range of candidates running for election, including lawyers who represented some of Mexico’s most feared cartel leaders and local officials who were forced to resign from their positions due to corruption scandals.
Also among those putting themselves forward are ex-convicts imprisoned for years for drug-trafficking to the United States and a slate of candidates with ties to a religious group whose spiritual leader is behind bars in California after pleading guilty to sexually abusing minors.
At the same time, voters have been plagued by confusion over a voting process that Patin warned has been hastily thrown together. Voters often have to choose from sometimes more than a hundred candidates who are not permitted to clearly voice their party affiliation or carry out widespread campaigning.
As a result, many Mexicans say they’re going into the vote blind. Mexico’s electoral authority has investigated voter guides being handed out across the country, in what critics say is a blatant move by political parties to stack the vote in their favor.
“Political parties weren’t just going to sit with their arms crossed,” Patin said.
Miguel Garcia, a 78-year-old former construction worker, stood in front of the country’s Supreme Court on Friday peering at a set of posters, voter guides with the faces and numbers of candidates.
He was fiercely scribbling down their names on a small scrap of paper and said that he had traveled across Mexico City to try to inform himself ahead of the vote, but he couldn’t find any information other than outside the courthouse.
“In the neighborhood where I live, there’s no information for us,” he said. “I’m confused, because they’re telling us to go out and vote but we don’t know who to vote for.”