They are looking for clean and honest candidates who will fulfil promises and sincerely try to solve their problems.

Such was the experience faced by Awami League aspirant AKM Iqubal Azad during pre-polls campaign in Sarail upzila in Brahmanbaria district yesterday and the day before.

At several small rallies in three villages, people bluntly told him that neither his party nor BNP and Islami Oikkya Jote fulfilled their election pledges.

People in Shahjadapur, Niamatpur and Dauria villages told the AL leader that they faced two major problems--lack of a seven-kilometre road from Shahjadapur to the Dhaka-Sylhet highway and power supply.

Ahead of every election, political leaders go to the villages and promise to build the link road and supply power, but only to be forgotten after being elected, they told the AL leader.

They said Abdus Sattar Buyan, now state minister for land and president of Brahmanbaria district BNP, was elected from the area three times earlier. He is now in the council of ministers as a technocrat.

In the last election, Mufti Fazul Haque Amini, leader of a action of Islami Oikkya Jote, was elected from the area as a candidate of the four- party alliance. But the villagers did not benefit as they flouted their promises, they said.

Likewise, Awami League did not do anything for them during its rule, they told the AL leader who invited questions and opinions from the audience.

Now, the villagers think that political leaders come only to lure them for vote by saying attractive things, many of them said while talking to this correspondent. Commitments, big or small, must be fulfilled and political parties should select honest candidates who will not 'deceive', people, they said.