Rebel riles AL in Barisal

Mamun

The ruling Awami League (AL) faced a drama over managing the party's lone rebel mayoral candidate of the June 15 Barisal City Corporation (BCC) elections.
The drama intensified when Mahmudul Haque Khan Mamun alias Khan Mamun, Jubo League Barisal city unit joint convener, went into hiding since May 25 to avoid being coerced into withdrawing his candidature.
May 26 was the withdrawal's last date.
Several teams of pro-AL bodies, including one of central Jubo League comprising its Chairman Omar Faroque Chowdhury, recently went to Barisal to locate and anyhow convince Mamun to withdraw.
This was to ensure that the AL backed candidate Shawkat Hossain Hiron, also the outgoing mayor and AL Barisal city unit president, gets a smooth ride in the election.
But they failed to locate Mamun. He does not even receive calls. “We are in an embarrassing situation,” Faroque told this correspondent yesterday.
AL leaders opined that since the withdrawal deadline had passed, Mamun could at least stop electioneering for himself and start backing Hiron.
Mamun has a history of being a rebel candidate.
He contested the 2009 upazila polls defying party orders, bagging 14,000 votes. The AL backed Monirul Islam got 20,000 votes while BNP backed Azizul Haque won by bagging 27,000 votes.
Mamun was also a rival AL mayoral candidate in the 2008 BCC polls but the AL was later able to manage him.
Mamun was a former president of Bangladesh Chhatra League of BM College unit during the 1990s, Barisal district unit Jubo League General Secretary Fazlul Karim Shahin told The Daily Star yesterday.
He took part in the college students' union election three times from 1990 to 1998 as BCL's rival but won in none, he said.
Omar Faroque said Mamun was expelled from Jubo League eight times but he managed to mysteriously come back every time.
Jubo League leader Iqbal Mahmud Bablu told this correspondent yesterday that their team decided in principle to again expel Mamun.
The Daily Star could not reach Mamun over his cellphone.
Our Barisal correspondent adds, Jubo League, the youth front of the AL, decided last night to expel Khan Mamun for his refusal to withdraw from the mayoral run.
The youth organisation took the decision at a meeting in a Barisal city hotel.