The Awami League is planning to keep the BNP-led alliance busy in local-level polls so that it could not wage street agitation, a policy which could give the Sheikh Hasina’s government a breathing space in consolidating its authority to stabilise the economy.
As part of the plan the elections to 64 district councils will follow the upazila polls, the AL policymakers have decided. The local government ministry has already initiated procedures for asking the EC to hold the district council polls, ministry officials said.
With a view to luring the grassroots leaders of the BNP-Jamaat into electoral politics, the government has requested the Election Commission to hold the polls to 487 upazilas, to be held between February 19 and March 31, in five phases.
Soon after the EC’s announcement, the BNP-led alliance declared that they would contest the upazila elections.
After AL’s assuming office, the EC arranged the upazila elections in 2009 – for the first time after 1990 – that cemented its position at the grassroots. The BNP-led alliance had boycotted the polls giving the AL leaders a walkover.
According to the law, the local government ministry will have to ask the EC to hold elections to the expired upazila councils, providing necessary information.
Without the ministry’s letter, the commission cannot hold the upazila polls with its own initiative. The tenure of the upazila council is five years.
“Elections to the expired local government bodies will take place [in time]; the Election Commission will hold the polls,” Matia Chowdhury, an AL Presidium Member and agriculture minister, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury, an organising secretary of the ruling party, told the Dhaka Tribune that the BNP-led alliance had come to “realise that violence could in no way bring them political benefits.”
“So, they will be in the electoral race instead of so-called agitation and violence on the street,” he said.
The BNP, he said, came to realise that the trend of “totally boycotting the polls” in future would further aggravate the frustration of its grassroots leaders.
Another presidium member, Kazi Zafarullah, told the Dhaka Tribune: “The main challenge we confronted is to hold the national elections; we have overcome it.
“They [BNP] have come to the upazila polls and will contest the other [local government] polls in future. In that case, they will have no option left other than participating in the elections,” he observed.
The first phase of polls to 98 upazilas will take place on February 19 and 24; the second phase (117 upazila councils) on February 27 and the third phase (83) on March 15.
Source: Dhaka Tribune