The BNP will not participate in the upcoming upazila polls as per its previous decision, but it has two different thoughts on the elections.

The party's first thought is to boycott the polls to make sure the turnout of voters remains low like it happened in the January 7 national polls. The BNP also mulls over not being harsh on the party leaders who would participate in the local government polls, said party sources.

They said the party high-ups will observe the situation for a few days. If the grassroots leaders want to run in the polls as independents, they will not be stopped or expelled.

The ruling Awami League on Monday decided that it would not allow its leaders to use its electoral symbol "boat" in the upazila elections.

After the announcement, The Daily Star talked with some central and upazila-level BNP leaders to know their views on the upazila election.

The BNP has been staying away from all polls since 2019 and it expelled the leaders who contested elections going against the party's decision.

Many party leaders are in favour of contesting the upazila polls. They believe as senior party leaders, including Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, may walk out of jail on bail before the announcement of the polls schedule, the issue may be discussed seriously then.

"What will be our achievement through boycotting the polls if we cannot ensure a poor turnout?"

— An upazila-level BNP leader

The upazila polls issue was discussed recently in the party's standing committee meeting, but no decision was made, said party insiders, adding that the opinion of the grassroots leaders will also be taken into consideration.

"We are yet to discuss the issue in the party forum [after the Awami League's decision], but one thing is certain: people have no confidence in any election held under a partisan government," Goyeshwar Chandra Roy, a standing committee member of the BNP, told The Daily Star yesterday.

Another standing committee member said people boycotted the parliamentary polls in response to the BNP's call and that's why the party cannot run in the upazila election.

"If the BNP contests the polls, it may send a wrong message to the people as well. Many of the party men are still behind bars. If the party announces that it will run, fresh arrests may be made," said BNP leader Anwarul Huq, also a former chairman of Noakhali's Sonaimuri upazila.

Another senior BNP leader said the AL may adopt the strategy of fielding "dummy candidates" like it did in the national polls to ensure a festive polls atmosphere.

"If the party grassroots don't show any interest in contesting the upazila elections, then the party may call upon the people to boycott the polls," he told this correspondent wishing anonymity.

Party leaders said the upazila chairmen and vice chairmen candidates usually maintain close communication with the local people and that's why turnouts in the local government elections always remain high.

Besides, people also consider many local issues in the local government polls for which the BNP will find it difficult to keep the turnout low, they observed.

"What will be our achievement through boycotting the polls if we cannot ensure a poor turnout?" said an upazila-level BNP leader.

He argued if the BNP joins the elections, the party candidates would come under attacks, which in turn could expose the government's intention and justify the BNP's decision of boycotting the parliamentary elections.

BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi yesterday at a press briefing at the party's Nayapaltan central office said no election under Sheikh Hasina will be fair, credible, and peaceful.

"So, the BNP had decided not to participate in any elections under Sheikh Hasina. The party still stands by that decision," he added.

Since 1991, Bangladesh has witnessed robust, genuine general elections till 2008, with the exception of the one in February 1996 which was overseen by the ruling government and boycotted by the main opposition of the time. Regardless of the veracity of those elections (1991, June 1996, 2001 and 2008), the losing parties labelled them as "unfair," claiming "minor irregularities," "blatant rigging," "election engineering," "ballot stuffing" or "voting at night." We also witnessed how 153 lawmakers were elected uncontested in the 2014 election, while in 2018, there were widespread allegations of ballot stuffing on the eve of the actual polls.

So, the nature of the impending election gives us a moment to ponder the present political scenario. The ruling Awami League is desperately trying to showcase the polls as inclusive and competitive—one that will lead to high voter turnout, although the main political opposition BNP and some left-wing and right-wing parties are boycotting the polls.

Read more

Elections without choice: A leaf out of autocrats’ playbook

As the ruling party's main challenge is to make the election look inclusive, it has adopted a strategy of allowing and encouraging those within its ranks to run as "independent" candidates. But before the ruling party chief endorsed their "independence," these aspirants were known as "rebel" candidates, who run against candidates of their own party after having been spurned in the race for nomination.

These independents have now become a major concern for ruling party nominees. According to news reports, intra-party fights are now likely, meaning that the contest will mainly be limited to AL nominees and AL independents. However, whoever wins, it is basically a victory for the ruling party. The election will look competitive as both candidates will try to reach out to the voters, possibly leading to higher voter turnout, although how fierce the intra-party feud will be is yet to be seen. There will also be no walkover this time, meaning no string of candidates being elected unchallenged—like what happened in 2014.

Rights advocate Sultana Kamal has rightly stated that the election has become a staged performance. We know the opposition parties have been terming the election staged, but when it comes from a noted civil society member who is uncompromising on issues of liberation and human rights, that gives it more credence.

Obviously, it is a good move to make the election competitive, but this one may prove to be costly depending on how it plays out in the future.

Meanwhile, the ruling party's alliance partners seem more concerned. They held a series of meetings with AL to negotiate a settlement on the number of seats that might be conceded to them. According to reports, this is likely to be only seven—down from 16 in 2018—with Jatiya Party (Monju) getting one, and two leftist parties getting three each. All the alliance partners said they wanted to contest the election with the AL symbol like they did in the past.

This time, the ruling party announced candidates for 298 seats. So, it has to withdraw some of its candidates from the seats where its alliance partners will run. But this is not enough for the coalition partners. They want no independent candidate from the ruling party, which essentially means they want to be elected unchallenged. They want assurance of victory in the polls, because an endorsement from AL ensures that. This precludes any possibility of competition, which is the main essence of an election.

There is more. The main opposition in parliament, Jatiya Party, is also negotiating with the ruling party over seat-sharing. It also wants assurance of victory and a guarantee that there will be no independents in its constituencies. But AL has said there will be independents. It is surely a rare incident in Bangladesh politics when the opposition party is in discussion with the ruling party over election strategy. Jatiya Party saw itself broken into factions over election, and its manner of negotiations points to its utter lack of confidence in winning a competitive election.

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Another managed election will be disastrous

So when the political situation is largely like this, the whole affair seems like a friendly charity match, in which it doesn't matter who wins. After all, it will either be AL's nominee or loyalist, or an "opposition" endorsed by AL itself. This proves that Awami League has become so strong that other parties exist merely on paper. Basically, those parties have degenerated into political clubs without any ideology, and the polls are merely a cosmetic exercise to exhibit—by dint of their presence on the ballot—that they do indeed exist. Their only intention is to land in parliament with the blessings and generosity of the ruling party.

The alliance partners and Jatiya Party have been in a favourable position for the last 15 years, enjoying their status and privileges. However, they have failed to strengthen their parties. Meanwhile, the ruling party has taken the election process to such a level where its victory is a certainty one way or the other.

While opposition parties used different labels to term previous elections, as stated before, this time it's different. Rights advocate Sultana Kamal has rightly stated that the election has become a staged performance. We know the opposition parties have been terming the election staged, but when it comes from a noted civil society member who is uncompromising on issues of liberation and human rights, that gives it more credence.

Read more

Expediency triumphs over principle in electoral politics

The most crucial point is that, previously, these questions were raised after the elections ended, but this time, they are being raised even before it is held. The way AL is managing contesting parties and the strategies it has adopted to make the election inclusive and competitive, this election is surely a cosmetic one through which the government will be able to claim that everything was perfect, at least, through the clinical lens of legitimacy. But it would fall desperately short in terms of the spirit and purpose of elections.

Mohammad Al-Masum Molla is chief reporter at The Daily Star.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.

So far, we have written a lot about the general election and how the ruling party and the present government have miserably failed (in fact, they never really tried) to create an appropriate atmosphere for a free and fair election. We have also written highly critical pieces regarding the way in which they have treated the main opposition, BNP, with hundreds sentenced, thousands arrested, and many thousands more on the run to stay out of the police's clutches. Our legal system stands weaponised to punish the dissenters, with the police having been given full immunity to misuse their powers to punish, harass and intimidate political opponents, terrorising them beyond belief.

But what about the other side? Did BNP play its part in living up to the wishes of its workers, leave alone the wishes of the people who are dissatisfied with the government and disillusioned with the Awami League? Was BNP's decision to boycott the election taken in any consultative manner, or was it simply imposed on the party workers?

Read more

Column by Mahfuz Anam: Is Awami League heading towards a Pyrrhic victory?

Given the tradition of anti-incumbency among our voters, the unending stories of misuse of power, corruption, and the nepotism in AL, it is not unreasonable to think that people may have wanted a change. Did BNP build on that? Our own reporters' briefings, the studies that remain unpublished for fear of reprisal, and the rumoured intelligence reports all suggest that support for the opposition was considerable, if not overwhelming. What did BNP do with that support?

Immediately after the 2018 election, BNP declared that it would not participate in any future election under the AL regime, and demanded a caretaker government. Its division-level mobilisation late last year resulted in massive rallies despite severe obstacles, such as transport strikes and various impediments imposed by the government. It gave the BNP and its sympathisers the impression that the party's campaign was bearing fruit.

This election boycott would be the BNP's second one. There are no instances in our region—perhaps none in other democracies either—of a political party surviving after boycotting two elections over a span of one decade. Could this situation present an existential problem for the BNP?

However, perhaps missing in its calculation was how overwhelming the governmental response would be, and when it came, how BNP would tackle it. Alarmed by the public support for BNP, the ruling party unleashed all sorts of undemocratic and extralegal measures to curb the opposition. The actions post-October 28—most oppressive, by any standard—severely affected the BNP's capacity to continue its programmes. The arrest of the party's secretary general, followed by arrests of many top BNP leaders (and with the rest being kept on the run), literally incapacitated this massive party.

To put it simply: BNP launched a movement to oust AL from power—demanding a caretaker government amounts to that—without adequate preparation, and this is now becoming more and more evident. The BNP failed to reap anything effective from the huge public support that it was able to garner late last year.

BNP also made the fatal mistake of not having a Plan B. Demanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's removal from power was bound to trigger retaliation. There seems to have been no clear thinking on how to survive that. If the purpose was to loosen the incumbents' hold on the election mechanism, there could have been proposals for power-sharing during elections, or select portfolios being given to the opposition or neutral people under some constitutional arrangement agreed to by both sides. Since the role of police is the key during elections, there could have been special proposals for reducing the ruling party's hold on them. Alternative views would have shown voters that BNP was flexible and open to negotiations. Shutting down all prospects of this was another vital mistake on the BNP's part. This is where the "external pressure" that the BNP was counting on felt completely let down. In all the talks that the BNP had with ambassadors, none supported the idea of an election under a caretaker government, while all insisted on the need for a free and fair election, for Bangladesh's own democratic future. BNP did not absorb this message.

Read more

Placing dummies as alternatives disenfranchises voters

It can be argued that AL never really wanted BNP in the poll contest in the first place, and that BNP never realised that its boycott was actually serving the AL's goal of keeping it out of the political process as a whole.

It appears that the biggest opposition party never really conducted any in-depth analysis as to whether a boycott would really serve its long-term interests. One wonders what lessons the BNP learnt from its boycott of the 2014 election, if any. Among many other issues, it can be argued that, had the BNP not boycotted the 2014 election, Khaleda Zia would not have lost her position as the leader of the opposition and perhaps would not have faced persecution and incarceration. Even if that had happened, Begum Khaleda Zia would have been far better placed to fight those cases as the leader of the opposition than as just a political leader. Her eclipse from having an active role in leading the party has had a devastating impact on the BNP. Could this have happened if the party hadn't boycotted the election in 2014? Did it take any of this into account?

This election boycott would be the BNP's second one. There are no instances in our region—perhaps none in other democracies either—of a political party surviving after boycotting two elections over a span of one decade. Could this situation present an existential problem for the BNP?

BNP's approach appears to be that, unless assured of victory, the party deems it of no use to participate in the election—a fatal mistake, in our view. The advantage of being a powerful opposition never seems to have appealed to BNP. It did not consider that the parliament would provide a powerful forum through which to propagate its own policies and visions for the future, and thereby create an image of it as a viable alternative.

The truth is, however sad and damaging it may have been for the growth of parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh, neither of our two big parties ever took the role of being the opposition seriously. Both AL and BNP always wanted power, and never the role of a responsible critic to keep the government in check.

As said earlier, anti-incumbency, a government's failures, widespread corruption, and arrogance have all contributed to a feeling for a need for change, which the BNP failed to build on. It might not have gotten the majority votes to form the next government, but it definitely could have formed a powerful opposition, giving it an effective stage to strive for power in 2029. But such a strategy does not appear to have interested BNP at all. It was an "all or nothing" gambit that led BNP to opt for boycotting the election, for which the country and democracy will have to pay a high price.

Read more

Column by Mahfuz Anam: Towards a 'free and fair' election, indeed

If BNP had decided to participate in the election, there would have been 300 BNP (or, in partnership with others) nominees in every nook and corner of the country campaigning for themselves and exposing AL's corruption, power abuse, and misdeeds. The campaign itself would have held the ruling party to some account and significantly strengthened BNP's hold on the public mind. If nothing else, BNP's campaign itself would have had some sobering effect on the ruling party. Its participation would have encouraged foreign observers to take notice, which definitely would have helped to make our election better.

Today, BNP supporters are nothing more than mere onlookers as village after village prepares for the polls, now buoyed by the participation of AL's "rebel" candidates.

Today, all BNP can do is call hartals that nobody follows, enforce blockades which are nowhere to be seen, and declare mass protests that are practically non-existent. All that the opposition on the streets are able to do is create disruptions, which further raise questions about its success.

What a pitiable state to be in for our second-largest political party.

Mahfuz Anam is the editor and publisher of The Daily Star.

Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.

BNP senior leader Nazrul Islam Khan yesterday said their party will be in the frontline of a movement to be launched under “greater unity” platform to force the government to hold a credible national election.

“We're saying from BNP's side that we're not only willing to forge a greater unity, but also want to remain in the frontline of the movement to be launched by the unity. We'll take part in all programmes on the streets,” he said.

He came up with the remarks at a discussion arranged by Sammilita Chhatra Forum at Jatiya Press Club, demanding release of Khaleda Zia and other detained BNP leaders.

Nazrul, a BNP standing committee member, said Khaleda called for a greater unity in 2016 to realise various demands, including resignation of the government, holding polls under a non-party administration, dissolution of parliament and deployment of army.“Jukta Front and Dr Kamal Hossain's Oikya Prokriya are also making the same demands. Since our demands are identical, we can certainly carry out a struggle together,” he said.

Nazrul Islam said all political parties except for the ruling party and some of its allies, social organisations, Sujan, TIB and Ain o Salish Kendra are of the same opinion that it is not possible to hold the national election in a fair and credible manner under a partisan government.

He said their party wants to join the next election as it believes in change of power through polls. “But we're not interested in taking part in any game in name of an election.” 

BNP Standing Committee member Abdul Moyeen Khan today demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and cancellation of yesterday's "dummy election".

"Sheikh Hasina's resignation is the only option. Sheikh Hasina must resign and the dummy election of January 7 must be called off right away," said Moyeen at a press conference in the BNP chairperson's office in Gulshan.

Selima Rahman and Nazrul Islam Khan, other standing committee members, were also present at the programme.

"A government of the dummy, by the dummy, for the dummy will be established if Sheikh Hasina attempts to form any kind of government through the dummy election," Moyeen said.

He said people want an accountable government elected by their votes, not a "dummy government."

He said BNP and other pro-democracy parties will continue their movement until an "accountable government" is elected through polls.

"Until an accountable government is established by the people's vote, the countrymen will continue their movement and struggle," he added.

Moyeen accused the Election Commission of peddling contradictory turnout figures of 27 percent and 40 percent.

"Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal once said the turnout was 27 percent. Then immediately another commissioner, sitting next to him, revised it as 40 percent," he added.

The 27 percent figure was provided at 3:00pm, an hour before polls closed.

The BNP leader congratulated people for "rejecting" the January 7 polls, which he called a "one-sided election" held through abuse of "state power and a dummy Election Commission, candidates and observers."

Moyeen said 19 centres in Khagrachhari recorded "zero turnout", which proves the election was a "mockery".

"It's not just 19 centres, in many other centres across the country not a single vote was cast or only 10-12 votes were cast," he said.

He claimed that Awami League even failed to ensure voters' presence despite "fielding dummy candidates".

Moyeen said, "We're continuing to stay on the streets, conduct mass contacts with the public, and hand out leaflets. We'll announce the next course of action."