Victory of opposition-backed MA Mannan in Gazipur City Corporation (GCC) polls seemingly demonstrates the bankruptcy of Jatiya Party and its chief HM Ershad. Both the Awami League and BNP had desperately tried to win over the Jatiya Party chief, overestimating his party’s strength.
Delegations from the ruling and opposition parties had rushed to the former dictator, ahead of the GCC elections to win his support, anticipating that his party would have a significant influence in Gazipur city.
At first, Ershad announced that he would not align with either of the two parties and work for their mayoral candidates – the BNP’s MA Mannan and the Awami League’s Azmat Ullah Khan.
Following this, Azmat went to meet Ershad at his residence, which prompted his rival, Mannan, to follow suit.
The deposed president blessed both of them.
Interestingly, a couple of days later, Ershad instructed his party supporters to work for Azmat, a move regarded by political leaders as a volte-face from his earlier stand.
Most of the leaders of the Jatiya Party, however, worked in favour of Mannan, in violation of the party chief’s order. This clearly demonstrated the weakness in the Jatiya Party’s leadership.
Ershad’s support could not guarantee victory for Azmat. Mannan won the polls by a margin of over 100,000 votes against the ruling alliance candidate.
“The excessive steps taken to win Ershad’s support [by the two major parties] shows the bankruptcy of our political parties.
Now it has been proved that his votes are insignificant,” Prof Nizam Uddin Ahmed, a political researcher and author of several books, told the Dhaka Tribune.
Ershad could have bargained with either the BNP or the Awami League, for more seats in the next general elections for supporting their candidates in the GCC polls, he said.
The BNP candidate’s triumph, despite lacking Jatiya Party’s support, would limit Ershad’s opportunities for bargaining with the big parties, ahead of the next general polls, another political researcher told the Dhaka Tribune.
The Jatiya Party got 45,187 votes in four seats in the 1991 general elections, more than two months after his removal from power on December 6, 1990. In the 2001 elections, the Jatiya Party formed an alliance with some Islamic parties, contesting elections as Islami Jatiya Oikya Front. In that year, the Front’s candidates garnered only 54,951 out of around 1.3m votes in four seats of Gazipur.
Most of his party leaders left him, joining other parties since the Jatiya Party’s support kept declining after every election. In 1991, the party achieved around 11% of the votes but the support declined to 7% by 2008.
Political observers say the major political parties would rate HM Ershad and his party for purposes of the next general elections, on the basis of his strength in the greater Rangpur region.