The results in the Bangladesh general election held on Jan 5 offer no surprises. With Khaleda Zia led BNP and its allies sticking to their poll boycott stand, it became more or less a one-leg race.
And the Awami League, the party which had won independence for the country, returned to power for a second consecutive term. The party’s candidates were declared elected in 127 of the 154 uncontested seats in the 300-member Jatiyo Sangshad (Parliament).
Of the remaining uncontested seats, the Jatiya Party led by Rowshan Ershad bagged 20, the JSD three, the Workers Party two and the Jatiya Party (Manju) won one seat.
Polling was marred by violence and the turnout was low. At least 21 people were killed on polling day.
In the run up to the election, Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its alliance of 18 opposition parties had called more than 85 days of nation-wide strikes and blockades which mostly ended in violence and in the death of innocent.
Khaleda Zia’s single point agenda was elections under a caretaker government. She demanded that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina should amend the statute to again provide for caretaker set-up, dissolves parliament after her full five year term ends on January 24,
2014 and hand over power to a caretaker government that would be run by technocrats for 90 -days.
Hasina made a counter offer – an all party interim election cabinet government which would include opposition parties till the election. Khaleda rejected the offer.
After the result, Prime Minister Hasina said that the boycott should "not mean there will be a question of legitimacy. People participated in the poll and other parties participated."
And added: "Look, I tried my best, I told you, I offered ministry, I offered to share power with our opposition. I have done as much as I can do but they didn’t respond. Now if they realize that they made a mistake, perhaps then they may come forward to discuss with us or make an offer. If they come forward to discuss with us, they have to leave all these terrorist activities behind because what they are doing it is absolutely killing people, killing police, killing innocent people”.
The Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu made the same point when he said: "What is important is that the people defied violence”. The turnout did not matter in such circumstances, he remarked.
The 25 per cent turn out is higher than the record low of 21 percent in 1996 when the Awami League then in opposition, staged a boycott. The turnout in the 2008 general election was a staggering 83 percent though.
The crackdown on Jamaat e Islami (JeI) and war crimes tribunals’ verdicts that had held JeI guilty had helped to push up the AL acceptance index.
Last month, senior JeI leader Abdul Quader Mollah was executed. JeI was not in the fray this time, not because it is a part of the BNP led alliance but because it has been banned from electoral politics for its sectarian agenda.
The BNP’s posturing as a defender of democracy is a sham. In office, the BNP, which has close links with sections of the military, and Pakistan’s ISI, has resorted to anti-democratic methods, including police repression and ballot rigging.
-Poreg Desk
