On July 6, 2013 the Awami League supported candidate Advocate Ajmatullah Khan was convincingly defeated by the BNP supported candidate MA Mannan who became the first Mayor of the newly declared Gazipur City Corporation. Incidentally Gazipur has always been seen as the invincible bastion of Awami League after Gopalgonj. Before the fall of Gazipur to BNP the mayoral candidates backed by Awami League in four other city corporations, Rajshahi, Khulna, Sylhet and Barisal were also lost to BNP backed candidates. In all these four city corporation elections incumbent AL backed candidates as city mayors in their last tenure did not fail their duties in development of their respective cities and no allegation of any major corruption was ever heard against them. Still the voters chose the other option. In the case of Gazipur, Advocate Khan was the Chairman of the Tongi pourashava for seventeen years and had a clean image and it was widely believed that his chance of being elected was much higher than his opponent as he carried many cases of corruption against his name. Earlier when he was the state Minister for Religious Affairs during Begum Zia’s previous government he was sacked over alleged Haj money misappropriation scandal. Tongi pourashva now forms part of the Gazipur City Corporation. However, strangely enough the local voters found MA Mannan to be more eligible to be their mayor in their maiden corporation election over the clean image Advocate Khan. Though during the previous four city corporation elections the AL President Sheikh Hasina was in the country she was out of the country on an official tour to England and Belarus and had to depend on the media and her party leadership to hear the collapse of her party candidate in Gazipur. No doubt her trip went completely sour by this one single incident.

Since the fall of AL’s Gazipur bastion the party well-wishers, political analysts and a section of the media is trying to dig into the facts as to what went wrong and how it might affect the coming national election. As expected the BNP and its allies are jubilant and trumpeting their unexpected extraordinary success in the five city corporation elections. BNP’s acting Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has reiterated his regular demand asking the present government to step down and arrange for the next general election under their proposed ‘neutral non-party caretaker government’ making way for their expected comeback. The Prime Minister and the AL President Sheikh Hasina is back from her England and Belarus trip and is doing some fact finding as to what caused the collapse. She has planned to sit with her party policy makers to discuss the matter and according to some published reports there may even be a major shake up in the party, making it more visible, functional and active. Analysts across the board have agreed that the party has to a great extent disappeared in the government after their landslide victory of 2008 December election. Now it has to be re-discovered and reinstated if it desires to regain its lost ground and face next election. Many fear that if the AL fails to make a comeback in the next parliamentary election not only the trial of perpetrators of 1971 will be scrapped but also those involved in this trial will themselves be facing a different kind of trial and some even apprehend a big backlash.

Generally speaking in Bangladesh both AL and BNP commands a blanket support of equal number of party supporters that hovers round roughly 35%. According to the election of 2008 there were about 30% swing voters who decide which party forms the government. Since the 2008 election about one million more new voters have been added to the existing voters list. In Gazipur their were one million plus voters of which M A Mannan received the support of 3 lakh 65 thousand and 444 voters while his rival Advocate Ajmat Ullah Khan was supported by 2 lakh 58 thousand and 867 votes. Mannan received a total of 36.5% votes, 1.5% more votes than that the usual BNP vote, presumably from the swing voters. On the contrary Khan received 25.8% of the votes which is approximately 9.2% less than their actual vote. This simply tell that of his assumed traditional vote bank he lost 9.2% votes and top of that he could not pull any support from the swing voters. In the Gazipur election approximately 60% voters (some reports say 62%) cast their vote, meaning about 40% decided to stay at home on the day of election. In the 2008 election AL bagged about 45% votes in Gazipur. Khan could not make any dent in the extra 10% votes that supported the AL in the last election. It simply means the AL backed candidate actually could not pull the support of all the possible voters of AL in the recently concluded election.

Even if we conclude that the local voters picked someone with dubious track record to be their first elected mayor, why did the traditional voters of AL did not come and vote for Advocate Ajamat Ullah Khan? Many would like to ascribe the failure of AL backed candidate in this election to the false propaganda of BNP plus Jamaat plus Hefazat and plus a section of media. This may partially be true, but what seems to be truer is that AL candidate and AL as a party has failed to bring its own genuine supporters to the election booths. This is true in all other four city corporations and it is the repeat of the Chittagong City Corporation election of 2010. One single reason why this happened besides the inner feuding amongst some party leaders and workers is that the party has practically disappeared and needs to be rediscovered and thoroughly reconstituted, lock stock and barrel. How it will be done is the prerogative of the top leadership, but it has to be done not only for the interest of the party but for the interest of the nation. It serves no purpose blaming others for one’s own failure if the causes are within and can very much be fixed with a bit of sincerity and pragmatic and practical approach.

The writer is a former Vice-chancellor,

University of Chittagong.