He is one of the members of Washington based think tank group and he does exhaustive research on South Asian politics and diplomacy. Mr Scheffer is now the Deputy Director at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. He recently observed the General Election held in Bangladesh on December 29.He was the leader of the NDI election monitoring team
In an exclusive interview with VOA Bangla Service , Howard Schaeffer says that this election in Bangladesh was free and fair by all canons of International standard. He says that whether it was the list of voters , or the party manifestoes, or the role of the caretaker government in Bangladesh , all aspects of this general election in Bangladesh was very fair. He said unlike in other elections neither the religious minority nor the ethnic minorities came under any pressure from any quarters.
He also noted the fact that many young voters exercised their voting rights with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. He also said that with the historic victory that Sheikh Hasina got from people in Bangladesh she needs to fulfill the pledge she made and deliver what people are looking forward to.
