Placing dummies as alternatives disenfranchises voters

It's now clear that the 12th parliamentary election will largely be a contest between the official nominees of the Awami League and those who have been declined nomination by the party. Officially, there are about 30 registered political parties in the race, but most of their participation can be better described as token representation. Even the total number of nominees from the three much-hyped parties—Bangladesh Nationalist Movement (BNM), Trinamool BNP, and Bangladesh Supreme Party (BSP)—could not equal the 300 seats that are up for grabs.

Apart from propping up these three "king's parties," there have been several attempts to break up and weaken the opposing BNP and its alliance, who have been mounting street agitation for over a year, demanding a reintroduction of the caretaker government for overseeing the upcoming parliamentary election. But such attempts, including bringing in General Ibrahim's Kalyan Party to the electoral race, didn't incur a meaningful dent in the opposition camp.

Then came a bigger surprise. Shahjahan Omar, one of the vice-presidents of BNP implicated in a case of arson and violence for the disturbances caused on October 28 along with dozens of other senior leaders of the party, was allowed bail 24 hours before the closing of nominations. The climax involved a letter from the prime minister to the Election Commission, nominating Omar as the ruling party candidate for one of the seats in Jhalakathi.

Shahajan Omar's Awami League ticket, however, raises some serious questions regarding the judiciary's role given that all other co-accused or indictees of similar charges have been denied bail and remain in prison. There's little doubt that his freedom was part of a deal reached during his captivity. It also suggests that other leaders in BNP, especially those in prison, faced similar pressure which is unacceptable in a democracy.

Amid growing pressures—largely from international partners—for a free, fair, and participatory election, many observers now think that the government wants to make the election appear competitive and free to show that BNP has committed another blunder by boycotting it. However, such a strategy could backfire if an unusually large number of independents are elected. It could allow disgruntled allies and party rebels to gang up and form a powerful block, causing a larger split in the ruling alliance.

Can AL now deny that Shahjahan Omar's nomination is an admission that he is a formidable and winning candidate? Isn't it also an admission that other senior leaders of BNP, who have been more prominent than him, are also election winners, and that's why poaching them from BNP or removing them from competition was necessary for AL to hold on to power? Would AL now admit to its efforts to create a national alternative of BNP for the election?

We are witnessing an engineered intra-party contest as most of the independents, too, belong to the ruling party. This paper, under the headline "Not quite independent," reported last week that the candidates deprived of AL's nomination would also need the party's approval to become independent candidates. The report quoted the ruling party's General Secretary Obaidul Quader, following widespread declarations by hundreds of aspirants for party tickets, while media reports said that the PM wanted to make the election competitive by allowing party members to run as independents. These party-approved independents are better known as dummy candidates. But placing dummies as the alternative is nothing other than disenfranchising the people.

The objective here is to avoid a repetition of 2014, when AL won 153 seats out of 300 well before a single vote was cast owing to the boycott by BNP and most other mainstream parties. This time, too, BNP and most of those parties are staying away from the election to promote the same cause—the appointment of a caretaker government to oversee the election.

According to EC data, the total number of nominations it received stands at 2,711, which is fewer than the number of aspirants of AL tickets as the party sold 3,241 application forms. It further shows that out of the 2,711 candidates, 747 are independents and at least 442 belong to AL. The only other party which was able to almost match the ruling Awami League in fielding the maximum number of candidates was Jatiya Party, a member of AL's grand alliance. Smaller allies of the ruling party (including a few Islamist parties), too, tried to maximise their participation in the election, raising their combined total to nearly 500.

This pattern is akin to that in all other polls held under the current EC's supervision as almost all of them were battles between party/ally nominees and rebel candidates, with a handful of exceptions. All the encouragement and enticement offered to other parties and BNP rebels to join the fray proved to be a mere exercise of showing the elections as being participatory.

This huge number of dummies, however, has become a new worry for the ruling party as about 70 of them are sitting MPs and many others hold significant influence in their respective constituencies, in their own rights and owing to their long-held party positions. Some of these dummies could eventually upset many senior leaders of the ruling party and its allies. Hence, prior authorisation has been made mandatory for AL members in order to become an independent candidate. Reports of administrative coercion and harassment of unauthorised candidates have already surfaced from various corners of the country. In one such incident, an upazila unit functionary of AL was taken and kept detained for several hours at a police station in Dinajpur.

Amid growing pressures—largely from international partners—for a free, fair, and participatory election, many observers now think that the government wants to make the election appear competitive and free to show that BNP has committed another blunder by boycotting it. However, such a strategy could backfire if an unusually large number of independents are elected. It could allow disgruntled allies and party rebels to gang up and form a powerful block, causing a larger split in the ruling alliance.

The EC's sudden move to shake up the lower echelons of the civil administration and police, despite its earlier refusal to do so (citing potential chaos), is indicative of making the contest somehow credible. Since the competition has already become a largely one-sided affair, it could be claimed that it has been done according to the wish of the government, and not independently by the EC.

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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