Mostafa Kamal MajumderThe Gazipur City Corporation election has made the incumbents to make a fresh assessment of their standing in scale of popularity. Awami League presidium members Tofail Ahmed and Obaidul Quader, who is also the minister for communication, have told the press that they would take lesson from the defeat and identify the mistakes that led to the same in order to face the general elections that are no far away.BNP leaders have asserted the people have withdrawn their support from the Awami League which has been in power for the last four years and six months, and that the successive wins demonstrated people’s support to BNP’s stand for restoring the caretaker system to hold credible elections.
One notable aspect of the Gazipur city corporation elections held within three weeks of elections in four large city corporations of Khulna, Rajshahi, Sylhet and Barisal, is the huge margin of 100,600 winning votes. The situation was no different in case of the four city corporation elections held on 15 June simultaneously.
There is logic in the argument that the people generally vote for the opposition in local government elections. In strong democracies like the United States the trend is for the voters to strengthen the opposition in the two House of the Congress when a President from one of the parties take charge of the White House. In our case by-elections could have given the electorate an option to help strike a power balance if in the eyes of the contenders those were fair and credible.
Does the Gazipur city election fall in the above mentioned trend of people’s choice? Probably not. The causes of the defeat noted by an Awami League stalwart hours after the announcement of results of the election, as reported, include: ‘lack of peoples’ confidence’, ‘people reject those who run the election remaining in power’, ‘there is nothing to identify as fort of votes; as the people can break any fort if they want’.
Another AL stalwart who on the election eve was confident in saying that AL candidate Azmat Ullah must win has identified some other causes of the defeat that include: factional feud within the party’s Gazipur unit, floating of candidature by rebel Jahangir and lack of support from grand alliance partners like the Jatiya Party.
About the mode of holding of elections Mayor-elect Abdul Mannan and central BNP leaders including Acting Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, Standing Committee members Moudud Ahmed and Barrister Rafiqul Islam have said there was every preparation for snatching results but people’s unity foiled such preparations.
Obaidul Quader has said, the people didn’t vote for us but we accepted the mandate and didn’t try to change the result forcibly. The allegations of the opposition BNP of rigging votes proved wrong and baseless, he added. Some other AL leaders asserted that the election of five city corporations proved free and fair elections were possible under the incumbent government.
Election observers in their initial findings reported that the polling was peaceful. The election commission asserted that the elections were free and fair and the Chief Election Commissioner urged all parties to accept the results. The opposition led by the BNP till the date of polling continued to press the Election Commission to deploy the army to ensure the conduct of free and fair elections.
Its clear that the clean sweep in the elections has given the BNP and allies an edge in politics before the general elections, but has not succeeded to remove the credibility gap with the incumbents, the general administration that the latter has fielded, as alleged, by sidelining the officials identified for being sympathetic towards the opposition, and finally the Election Commission.
The results of the five major city corporations show that the win of the opposition over the incumbents was comprehensive. The opposition not only captured the positions of all the Mayors but also a vast majority of the seats of ward councilors. In case of the Gazipur city BNP-backed candidates captured 39 out of 57 posts of ward councilors.
Barrister Rafiqul islam Miah has said that these city corporation elections reflected the people’s reaction to the incumbents’ failure in governance, the repression of the opposition, the enforced disappearances of opposition leaders and workers, killings, tender hijacking, share market, the Hall Mark, and Padma bridge scams plus politicisation of the administration. Another non-party analyst made mention of the bloody flushing out of Hefazat demonstrators from the Motijheel Shapla Chattar area on May 5 night.
Some sympathisers of the ruling alliance have blamed the BNP and its allies of playing the ‘Hezafat card’ and identified the same as an important factor that contributed to shaping the results of the city elections. Question remains how much influence this non-political religious platform could have on the elections! Lunched in response to blasphemous utterances from the Shahbagh Manch that was organised at the fag end of the month of February and continued for months, Qawmi Madrasah teachers and students under the banner of Hefazat-e-Islam brought to the fore the demand for restoration of absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah in the Constitution.
This privision, retained in the consensus 12th Amendment of 1991, was deleted through the 15th Amendment of the Constitution passed during the present tenure of the incumbents. Hefazat’s demand undoubtedly bolstered the stand of the opposition BNP. But before the May 5 suppression of their sit-in at Shapla Chattar there was no guarantee that they could support of the opposition in the following elections.
Orgainsers of the Hathazari Madrasah – the base of Hefazat – are known to have played an important role in drumming up support for the Awami League in the last general elections. Its Principal, the highly respected Allama Ahmed Shafi, emerged as the leader of the Hefazat-e-Islam which despite the suppressive actions remains committed to its to principal demands, the second being punishment of the blasphemous bloggers of the Shahbagh Manch.
Apparently the incumbents were apprehensive of the development of a Tahrir Square-like situation through Hefazat’s Dhaka siege and sit-in and suddenly moved to brand the ultra right, conservatives who are upholding a 250-year-old tradition of purist Islamic education, as radical Islamists. The repressive actions against them probably hurt a vast majority of the people. That Hefazat was not an organisation of radical Islamists is clear from the fact that it not only proved unable to regroup immediately after the May 5 action, but rather dropped a call of hartal (general strike) and refrained from calling any fresh agitation programme since then. Their engagement with law enforcers with sticks and brickbats on May 6 morning – that led to a number of deaths – following the harsh action against them the previous night is no indicator of their radicalism. Fact remains that Hefazat members had come to the Dhaka siege fron Qaomi Madrasahs across the country. Tales of armed action against them spread at the speed of light across the county not only through the mass media but also the land and mobile telephone networks that directly link almost a half of the population. On May 6 morning thousands of people from even the remotest areas the country were found making enquiries through mobile phones about what had happened in Dhaka on the night before.
Thus communication minister Obaidul Quader’s assertion that ‘there is nothing to identify as fort of votes; as the people can break any fort if they want’ for lack of confidence can be taken as something close to reality in respect of the city corporation elections. These local government elections could have been suspended till the holding of the general elections, as has been the case with the Dhaka City Corporation even after its partition into two for convenience of winning. These elections, observers noted, were taken as test cases before the general elections which are due between late October and early next January as per the 15th Amendment of the Constitution. The opposition also took the polls in the same vein. The people will eagerly wait to see how lessons are taken from these elections to make the general elections participatory and credible.
