Policemen cane protesters in Dhaka. (File picture)

Dhaka, Jan. 31 (Agencies): Hopes for a peaceful and credible parliamentary election in Bangladesh brightened today after five widely criticised senior officials at the Election Commission resigned.

Officials and analysts saw it as a positive step towards ending a long-running political crisis that forced caretaker authorities to postpone the election planned for late January.

They said the departure of the five, whose removal was a key demand of one of Bangladesh’s main political groupings, paved the way for the crisis to be resolved soon.

“The interim government now has scope to appoint non-partisan and unbiased election commissioners to lead the country through free and impartial elections,” Ataur Rahman, president of the Bangladesh Political Science Association, said.

President Iajuddin Ahmed summoned Commission chief Mahfuzur Rahman and his four deputies to the palace after they had defied weeks of public pressure to step down voluntarily. They told the President they would resign if he asked them to do so, the spokesman said.

“A new chief election commissioner and two deputies to assist him will be appointed by the President within a day or two,” Mainul Hosein, information and law adviser to the caretaker government, said.

A major political alliance led by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has accused the commissioners of bias, alleging they were favou- ring Khaleda Zia’s four- party coalition.

Protests since October have left at least 45 people dead and hundreds injured. The President declared a state of emergency, forcing the January 22 elections to be postponed.

Bangladesh has been crippled by a political stalemate since October when Prime Minister Zia stepped down at the end of her five-year term and handed power to an interim government to steer the country through elections.

The government has been considering a restructuring of the electoral commission that would be acceptable to all political parties.

Hasina’s powerful 19-party alliance has accused the caretaker administration of favouring Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party, claiming the electoral list was flawed. It also called for a postponement of the polls until a new list could be made.

No new election date is yet to be set.

Hasina had vowed not to participate in any election supervised by Rahman and his team. Western governments and the UN say an election without the participation of all major parties would be unacceptable.