The BNP and its key ally Jamaat-e-Islami have still not sorted out the seat-sharing issue for the upcoming municipality elections.
Yesterday, Jamaat skipped a secretary-general-level meeting of the 20-party alliance held at BNP chief Khaleda Zia’s Gulshan office. The meeting was mainly aimed at discussing and finalising strategies for the elections.
The BNP has officially nominated mayoral candidates in all but two of the 234 municipalities where elections will be held on December 30. It has left those two seats to its lesser allies – Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Jatiya Party-Zafar.
However, in at least 30 of those municipalities where the BNP has placed candidates, local Jamaat leaders also running as independent contestants.
In addition, local-level leaders of two other Islamist parties, Islami Oikya Jote and Khelafat Majlish, both partners of the alliance, have also filed for the mayoral post in several municipalities where there are BNP candidates.
The issue of reaching a consensus regarding seat-sharing became important for the 20-party alliance because of two reasons.
First, until now, all local government elections used to be non-partisan, meaning that political parties could only extend support for their favourite candidates, but not officially nominate them. However, the Jatiya Sangshad recently amended the municipality election law to make it a partisan affair.
Second, unlike its political rival ruling Awami League, the BNP has earlier announced that it was going to participate in the elections together with its alliance partners.
Similar situations arose in before last year’s upazila elections and this year’s city corporation elections as well when the BNP and Jamaat failed to reach consensus regarding sharing of seats.
Before finalising nominations earlier this month, Jamaat gave a list of 40 candidates to alliance chief Khaleda Zia, said sources. However, neither the BNP discussed anything with its partner, nor the Jamaat consulted the BNP before its leaders filed nominations.
Several BNP leaders have said that they had left it up to the local units of the two parties to decide on sharing mayoral seats.
“There will not be any distance [between BNP and Jamaat] over the municipality polls. There might be various reasons behind the absence of Jamaat representatives in the meeting,” Mohammad Shahjahan, joint secretary general of the BNP, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday
“It will not be any problem. We can reach a consensus with Jamaat even before the day of voting. It depends on the local leaders. There is no scope of misunderstanding,” he said.
No Jamaat leaders could be immediately reached for a comment on this issue until last night.
The BNP formed an election alliance with Jamaat, Bangladesh Jatiya Party (BJP) and Islami Oikya Jote before the 2001 parliamentary polls. This alliance took part in the 2008 national elections together as well.
In 2012, the alliance accommodated some little or unknown political parties to become the 18-party and later the current 20-party alliance.
Islami Oikya Jote candidates are taking part in mayoral elections in Bogra.
“For the first time, our candidate is contesting a local government election. We did not seek any support from the BNP for the polls,” said Abdul Latif Nejami, chairman of the party.
Khelafat Majlish, meanwhile, is running candidates in several municipalities in Tangail, Manikganj, Sylhet and Moulvibazar districts.
“There is no scope of withdrawing candidacy at this point. We will not pull out our candidates from the polls although the BNP has requested us to,” said Abdul Kader, secretary general of the party.
Kader also said that the BNP had not discussed anything with them about the polls. “We wanted to have discussions but they did not give us any importance.”
Seeking anonymity, a senior BNP leader told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that they are sure that the elections will not be fair. Ruling party candidates will sweep the elections through rigging.
“But if we get the assurance that the polls will be fair then we will try our best to resolve the seat-sharing issue and ensure only one candidate of the alliance in every municipalities,” the leader said.
After the alliance meeting yesterday, Mostafa Jamal Haider, secretary general of BJP, said Jamaat had informed them earlier that they would not be present in the meeting due to security concerns.