FROM GAZIPUR TO GONOBHOVON
Shahid Islam
Much of the holy expectations notwithstanding, no one seems happy with the outcome of the just concluded Gazipur city polling; both the winners and losers shedding tears for different reasons. The winners, including the ruling party chief and PM Sheikh Hasina, think the margin of victory for the ruling party candidate defied deserved national vote - bank calculations, according to sources close to the PMO, while the losers trashed out the results as a sham and an outright heist that showed why the upcoming national election could not be held under the dispensation of the incumbent regime.
Unusual polling pattern
Foremost, the voter turnout was unusual for this geographically largest, and heterogeneously - populated city corporation of the country. For instance, in Holyson Kindergarten and High School centre in Gazipur sadar, only 14.14 percent voters voted, while voter turnout was 94% in the the Basura Maktob Madrassa centre. According to EC sources, at least 40 polling centres had a voter turnout between 14 and 41 percent while 61 centres recorded a staggering 73 to 94% turnout.
As well, the overall turnout of 57.02% is quite abnormal for an area dwelled by nearly 400,000 industrial labour voters who call the city and its suburbs their homes. No wonder the ruling party candidate defeated his rival by a margin of about 200,000 votes; which stands in contrast with the known national voting pattern and the vote-bank support both the BNP and the AL enjoy respectively.
“The turnout is abnormal. It shows clear manipulation in the voting process,” a local government expert, Tofail Ahmed, told the media. Former election commissioner Brig Gen (retd) M. Sakhawat Hussain was more tactful in saying what he had in mind: “Gazipur city is a not a remote area so that the turnout will be very high in some places and very low in some other areas” he said, adding, “There are many ways to rig an election.”
Re-election demanded
A day after the polls’ conclusion, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir rejected the polls and demanded re-election. “This was merely a mockery in the name of elections. Different strategies of vote rigging were invented and used,” Fakhrul said in a press conference at the BNP chairperson’s Gulshan office in Dhaka. “With much hatred we reject the Gazipur City Corporation (GCC) polls,” he added.
BNP’s senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi gushed out similar sentiments at a press conference and said, “As per the information we’ve received so far, over 100 polling stations have been captured ... a grand festival of fake voting occurred.” He also alleged that their “party agents were driven out of many centres by ruling party men with the help of police,” a fact corroborated by many other esteemed national dailies’ and electronic media reports.
Accusation denied
The ruling party’s reaction to such allegations was expectedly unsurprising. During a post-election briefing at the AL president’s Dhanmondi office, the party’s general secretary Obaidul Quader said, “The BNP alleged that its agents were driven out of 100 centres but they did not show any evidence. I can challenge that they will never be able to prove the allegation.” He added, “The presiding officers did not allow BNP agents in as they failed to show valid documents.” Many TV reporters however reported live from the spots the conspicuous absence of BNP polling agents in most of the polling stations for which concerned authorities had no satisfactory answer.
In response to a question why BNP’s NEC member Maj. Mizanur Rahman (retd) was arrested, Quader said, “BNP was involved in hatching a plot to thwart the polls and the election atmosphere.” Blame of plotting also came from the AL’s joint secretary general Jahangir Kabir Nanak, who said at a press conference that “BNP brought the allegations to cover up their intra-party rift and their own weakness.”
When asked why BNP agents were found missing in most of the polling stations, Nanok said: “It is because of the weakness of the BNP candidate, they have failed to appoint agents. Now they are trying to shift the blame.” Nanok’s worst premonition was a bit scary. He warned, “BNP is trying to incite undemocratic forces by putting question marks on the Election Commission.”
Who are undemocratic forces?
What Nanok and Quader insinuated as ‘undemocratic forces’ and ‘plotters’ may not be clear to many election observers and general public, but, if the PM’s concern about the landslide victory margin being ‘a bit too much’ is correct, it showed her sagacity and political realism. Of course the ruling party chief wanted her party to win the GCC polls, but she did not want the outcome, and the polling sanity, to emit a message that an election under her incumbency will be ‘neither fair, nor inclusive.”
Yet, far from being a test case to convince the opposition to join the national polling under her incumbency, the GCC polling proved to be a scheme of her party apparatuses to make it a test case of how they should rig the national election to cling onto power by offering the BNP only one third of the parliament seats.
That may be a desire and a blue print, but the 5-year lease of the incumbent government will surely expire sooner, and, it’s time for the PM to reiterate and reinforce the message to her party stalwarts that, unless they start respecting the democratic process and its outcome, the nation will once again go under the spin of an undemocratic whirlwind. We suspect that’s what had made the PM sad and introspective.
- Courtesy: Weekly Holiday /June 29, 2018
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