Bargaining for victory is anything but an election

Exactly six months ago, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who is now in prison and charged with subversive acts in nearly a dozen new cases, expressed his apprehension that the government wanted to keep BNP out of the election. Police reportedly filed these new cases after the violent ending of BNP's grand rally on October 28. He already had about 84 cases pending, stemming from his party's campaign for reintroducing an election-time caretaker government since 2013, after the ruling Awami League unilaterally abolished it, relying on its super majority in parliament and a controversial court verdict.

On July 15, Fakhrul told journalists that by randomly implicating BNP leaders and activists in false cases, reviving cold cases, and fast-tracking trials, the government wanted to ensure it would keep BNP out of the election race. By the time the polling schedule was announced, his apprehension became true, as most of his senior colleagues and thousands of party activists were jailed over the preceding weeks. The number of convictions in a month has already crossed 1,000, which ensures debarring of scores of potential candidates, notably with a prison term of minimum two years, which is a constitutional disqualification.

Anyone observing Bangladesh politics would struggle to find a single speech made by ruling party leaders in which they don't blame BNP for all the ills of our country. There's little doubt the the ensuing election campaign will be anything but BNP-bashing, despite them being out of the contest. It bears testimony that BNP is the only one capable of putting up a real challenge against the Awami League. The recent crackdown on BNP lets observers conclude that BNP "could scarcely take part if it wanted to." The ensuing engineered battle among the faithfuls of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to get into parliament has already been termed a "farce" by The Economist three weeks before the actual voting.

With the screening process of candidates' eligibility ending, including the appeals process, we now know that despite the participation of 29 registered political parties, none of them, neither alone nor combining forces among allies, is capable of posing a nationwide challenge to the ruling party. On an average, each constituency now has about seven contestants, though the number of AL ticket aspirants was about 11, which suggests some of them might have lost confidence in the process.

The aspersions on Jatiya Party Chairman GM Quader put pressure to restrain himself from pulling his party out of the race. They pointed out the hastily arranged meeting between Sheikh Hasina and Raushan Ershad, who wanted to see her well before the closing of the nomination to intervene in her dispute with GM Quader. This meeting most likely made GM Quader aware about the risk of another split in his party, as most of its MPs are keen to secure their positions through negotiations.

One of the most noticeable elements of the "staged election," so far, is the fact that every party in the race (except those who only exist on paper) sought some sort of guarantee from the ruling party that a certain number of its candidates would be allowed a free ride. Astonishingly, those who bargained for such guarantees include well-known top leaders belonging to both the partners of the 14-party alliance and the PM-designated parliamentary opposition, Jatiya Party. The reported scale of bargain not only required withdrawal of the AL's official candidates, but independents authorised by it, otherwise known as dummy candidates, too. This is the first election in which we learnt that a party also puts up hundreds of dummies for creating or disrupting a fair contest.

One does not need to be an expert in electoral politics to understand the need for such guarantees as almost all elections, be it for parliament or for local government, held since the abolition of the caretaker system have largely been fixed by civil servants and police in favour of the ruling party. It was the result of politicisation of supposedly independent institutions including the police, civil service and courts.

According to Representation of the People Order (RPO), returning officers (ROs) are entrusted to certify the integrity and results of any election. The Election Commission has appointed civil servants as ROs instead of its own staff, despite considerable opposition to such a move from within the commission and the civil society. These politicians know that without the blessings from "the powers that be," none of them has a chance to return. We have never seen politicians belonging to the ruling coterie seeking and securing guarantees in an election bargain this way, for success from somewhere other than the ballot boxes.

There was some excitement and curiosity over the week-long drama over Jatiya Party's participation in the election. It attracted extra attention following the reported doubts expressed by the AL chief about Jatiya Party's intention amid some speculations that it might pull out of the race. But, parleys between the top leaderships of both parties continued throughout the week for a seat-sharing arrangement, under which AL nominees will withdraw from the race in an agreed number of constituencies.

This drama was all part of the game, as it makes people curious about an otherwise uninspiring contest. However, there were some cynical suggestions, too. According to them, the aspersions on Jatiya Party Chairman GM Quader put pressure to restrain himself from pulling his party out of the race. They pointed out the hastily arranged meeting between Sheikh Hasina and Raushan Ershad, who wanted to see her well before the closing of the nomination to intervene in her dispute with GM Quader. This meeting most likely made GM Quader aware about the risk of another split in his party, as most of its MPs are keen to secure their positions through negotiations.

As the most difficult part of sharing seats has been finalised, arranging some visible voter presence won't be that difficult for the government, as it has plenty of tools and resources for such mobilisations. But, there's little doubt that the ruling party will not stop talking about its formidable rival, BNP, anytime soon, as technically removing the real challenger from the electoral competition does not make it disappear from the field of politics.

Kamal Ahmed is an independent journalist. His X handle is @ahmedka1.

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

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