The upazila elections have produced no surprise – not in the politicisation of local government bodies, in allegations against the party in power of harassment, intimidation, and vote-rigging, and not in the results either. Had the Awami League won the majority in upazila chairman and vice-chairman posts in a fair play, such an outcome would have surprised the grassroots people, or those who are aware of the ground reality.
The AL camp has lost to the BNP-led alliance, which has no existence in the presently made, constitutionally constituted parliament. Reporters covering the elections told me that the BNP-led alliance secured a full panel of chairman and two vice chairman posts so far in 70 upazilas, against the AL candidates’ similar victory in 36 upazilas (BNP boycotted the voting in 20 of them) in the elections held in 210 upazilas in two phases.
To present a brighter picture for the AL, one would say its chairman candidates won in 80 upazilas. But alas! The BNP-backed candidates bagged a much higher number of posts – 117.
Some pundits sitting in Dhaka have observed that these results do not prove the political weightage of each party since upazila elections are non-political in nature. How come an election is a non-political affair? Their arguments also missed the fact that major parties themselves have fielded their candidates, only without allocating a party symbol.
However, AL publicity secretary Dr Hasan Mahmud’s claim that the upazila election results did not tell the whole story can be interpreted otherwise: The level of unpopularity his party has attained over the years is unfathomably deeper, and that will be visible in properly contested general elections.
For the AL now, it is all about the one-sided parliamentary elections that involve a historic cost. The country’s oldest political party has turned into a secluded force which looks desperate to defeat popular will at any cost. It has successfully denied the countrymen the opportunity to change the government.
The AL first pushed the BNP and all other parties out of the electoral process through the 15th Amendment and then captured majority parliamentary seats without any votes being cast. Finally, it staged a partial ballot, which too was tainted by poor participation, fake voting, and manipulation of voter turnout statistics.
Is it the party which is meant for the “awam” or “all the people?” Because of the January 5 elections, a party which boasted of politics of ballot has lost that kind of moral and political legitimacy. A devastating ego to cling to power and wipe out the opposition forces has rather invited the second death of the AL after it had disappeared into the one-party Baksal system in 1975.
It took the AL years to regroup, and it was only possible thanks to a political vacuum. The party has taken a Sheikh Hasina-configured shape with one rebirth during the martial law after the first death. Still, a generation which witnessed the Baksal rule and another generation which demonstrated against HM Ershad’s military rule did not vote for the AL in the 1991 elections.
Until January 5 this year, the younger generation which voted for the AL in 2008 had no experience of seeing vote-rigging and massive manipulation of polls results as seen during the Ershad regime. This generation, alongside many other electorates, has been upset with the AL’s crookedness in holding elections without the participation of other power contenders and also the people at large.
That is why the aggrieved voters have found the upazila elections a secondary platform, though not the perfect one, to express their anger against the AL.
In the past one year, the AL has been defeated in almost all elections which were contested by the party at which AL leaders hurl abuse every now and then. Sympathisers can pity Hasina as she exposes her frustration with abusive words at BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, but cannot save the AL leader from an inevitable downfall as a backlash to her suicidal steps undermining democracy and rule of law.
Bearing the stigma of a farcical election, the AL has no fair chance of winning fair polls in the near future. The party may have to face a more refined generation which wants to see development, good governance, and freedom of conscience, not foul play, corruption, and violation of citizens’ rights.
The AL is an exceptionally clever party in terms of reading the public’s mind for taking its next political course. In 1954, 1970, 1996, and 2008, it did foresee the victory. It probably misjudged its popularity only once – in 2001 – when it handed over power to the caretaker government for holding the polls it lost.
In 1975 and 2013 (leading up to 2014), the party correctly assessed the situation characterised by a nosedive in its popularity. Earlier it was Baksal which was introduced to avoid elections, and this time around it is a one-sided ballot that was designed to escape a widely predicted electoral loss.
In both the cases, laws were made to rule the country with the sweet will of a group and its sycophants. As the AL has not yet publicly renounced the one-party system, Baksal still remains its ideology. Like Baksal, we have no opposition in parliament today. From here, the Westminster type of government that we have inserted into our constitution twice needs a resurrection again in Bangladesh.
