Bangladesh will once again become a regional exporter of terrorism, as it was during the BNP-Jamaat coalition Government between 2001 and 2006, if the Jamaat calls the shots in any Government there
The Awami League will no doubt look back with satisfaction at the recovery it has made from the drubbing it took in the first two rounds of the Upazila (sub-district) elections in Bangladesh. Candidates backed by it won the chairman’s posts in 34 Upazilas against the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s tally of 41, the fundamentalist Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s 12 and the Jatiya Party’s one, in the first phase of elections on February 19. It continued to fare poorly in the second phase held on February 27, at the end of which its tally stood at 78 against the BNP’s 93 and the Jamaat’s 20. It was just a whisker behind the BNP after the third phase held on March 15, after which its total of chairman's posts stood at 118 against the BNP’s 120 and the Jamaat’s 27, with the rest going to other parties. It surged ahead at the end of the fourth phase held on March 23, its tally going up to 171 against the BNP’s 144 and the Jamaat’s 32, with other parties getting eight. The fifth, and the final, phase saw it forge decisively ahead, winning won 225 posts of chairmen against the BNP’s 157 the Jamaat’s 35, with other parties winning 35, besides the Jatiya Party’s three.
The dramatic recovery notwithstanding, the Awami League needs to do some serious introspection. Candidates supported by it won in as many as 331 chairman’s posts in the Upazila elections held in 2009, when the BNP won in only 79 contests. Clearly, there has been a marked fall in the party’s popularity. In fact, it has been argued that it would have done worse than it has but for widespread rigging by its activists. It can no doubt be argued that not much be read into these charges because losers in the country’s elections, even the ones to the National Parliament, have regularly attributed their defeat to malpractices and violence. The BNP did it after the parliamentary election of December 2008, which the Awami League had swept, and the Awami League had done the same on earlier occasions.
In fact, there were outrageous instances of rigging during the period between 2001 and 2006 when the Jamaat-BNP’s coalition Government was in power. A glaring instance was the by-election in Dhaka-10 constituency on July 1, 2004, in which the BNP candidate Mr Mosaddek Ali Falu, reputed to be close to Begum Khaleda Zia, routed his opponent, former Army major and MP, the Bikalpa Dhara Bangladesh’s candidate, Major MA Mannan. According to a report in The Daily Star of the following day, “Gangs of marauding youths, most of them aged between 18 and 25, forced their way into the polling centres and stuffed ballots [ballot papers] into boxes.” Despite a Dhaka High Court order to this effect, the Army was not deployed to ensure free and fair polling. The BDB’s polling agents were forced out of polling centres and Major Mannan’s complaint, made on the day of the voting itself, was summarily dismissed.
In fact the manner in which the BNP-Jamaat Government reconstituted the Election Commission to make it purely partisan and sought to pack the ranks of the Upazila returning officers with BNP supporters, is widely known. The Awami League, however, can draw little comfort from this. Upazila elections are supposed to be non-partisan but are a measure of the popularity of contending parties which support the candidates. While a certain amount of popularity loss is bound to have happened in the Awami League’s case after over five years of incumbency, complacence would be unwarranted given the tense political situation in the country following the BNP’s boycott of the parliamentary election held on January 5 and the violence over the elections as well as the war criminal’s trial.
A major cause of the Awami League’s relatively poor performance has been interference by party’s Members of Parliament in the selection of candidates and the sidelining of grassroots leaders and candidates. Internal feuding was another cause. The third factor was the alliance between the BNP and the Jamaat. The former benefited from the support of the latter’s large, disciplined army of cadres with sinister capacity for violence, and the latter from the former's mass base. Add to it allegations about poor governance characterised by widespread charges of corruption and inefficiency and a continuing decline in the law-and-order situation, and the list of causes is complete.
Clearly, steps to improve governance and tone up the party — and some of them quite drastic —need to be taken if the Awami League is not to let the ground slip further from under its feet. It needs to be especially careful because the elections have witnessed a very significant surge on the part of the Jamaat which has won an unprecedented total of 35 posts of Upazila chairmen.
The Jamaat, the fountainhead of Islamist extremism and terrorism in the country, had not only opposed the Liberation war of 1971 but has produced virtually every one of the war criminals who are either under trial or have been sentenced. It also stands against the basic tenets of Bangladesh’s Constitution with its emphasis on secularism. Indeed, it stands judicially debarred from contesting elections because its fundamentalist Islamist Constitution contravenes the principles of the secular democratic constitution of Bangladesh. It can only hope to contest again if an obliging BNP wins the parliamentary poll with a sufficient majority to amend the Constitution to remove its disqualification.
The spread of the Jamaat’s influence must cause the Awami League particular worry. It has got 35 of its candidates elected as chairmen of Upazilas when it had won virtually none earlier. This, as well as its ability to unleash widespread, murderous violence, demonstrated during its agitations against the trial and sentencing of war criminals and efforts to scuttle the January 5 parliamentary election, bode ill for Bangladesh’s as well as South Asia’s future. Bangladesh will once again become a regional exporter of terrorism — as it was during the BNP-Jamaat coalition Government between 2001 and 2006 — if the Jamaat gets to call the shots in any Government in that country.
One hopes that unlike in the case of the Awami League’s rout in the last year’s mayoral and city municipality elections, the party does not make it business as usual after a burst of anguished breast-beating.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/dangerous-for-south-asia-and-bangladesh.html
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