AL’s 250,000 trained campaigners to bring voters to polling stations

The governing Awami League on Tuesday trained its leaders and activists of the Jamalpur district office on Tuesday in bid to increase voter turnout in the 12th parliamentary election slated for 7 January in 2024. A total of 564 people received the training under the ‘Road to Smart Bangladesh Campaign’. Each of them will be responsible to bring 200 voters to polling stations.

Like Jamalpur, the ruling party has trained 202,580 vote ‘seeking’ activists in 118 constituencies as of 26 December, and these people are receiving training across the country under the offline campaign programme initiated by the national election conducting committee of Awami League.

Among other strategies that the ruling party has so far adopted is to allow the party leader to contest the upcoming election independently.

But voter turnout has turned to be one of the major challenges now as fear looms large over voters’ presence since various political parties and coalitions including Awami League’s major political rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) are not joining the 7 January election.

For this, Awami League is giving the trained polls campaigners the responsibility to bring voters to polling stations.

Road to Bangladesh Campaign’s Mymensingh regional coordinator Md Rafiqul Islam told Prothom Alo the main objective of the training is to bring voters to polling stations in respective areas, as well as to present the message on the government’s massive development and future plans so that voters get inspired to cast vote.

A responsible source involved with the campaign’s training informed Prothom Alo that the Awami League has taken a special initiative to impart messages on its development activities and future plans to the voters in a bid to increase the voter turnout.

The number of campaigners has been fixed by dividing the total number of voters of a certain constituency by 200. That means there will be 200 campaigners for a constituency that has 400,000 voters.

The Awami League sources further stated that the party plans to provide different types of assistances to the campaigners, including battery-run three-wheelers on the voting day to take voters to the polling stations.

A central call centre has been opened to provide information with the activists across the country. Besides, a mobile app with voters’ details has been developed for the campaigners, who will keep close contact with the voters until their casting votes at the polling stations.

Sources said initially, Awami League set a goal to train 600,000 campaigners in bid to reach 120 million voters, but the target was not fulfilled as 202,580 campaigners have received training in 118 seats as of 26 December.

Training operation has slowed down now.

At the beginning, training sessions were conducted at 20 seats a day, but now training is done at the request of the party candidates. Training is likely to be conducted in 15-20 more constituencies at most. Besides, no campaigner received training in Dhaka.

Several party leaders involved with the electioneering of Awami League said it has not been possible to train the campaigners at all constituencies due to time shortage.

However, independent candidates have built up a competition at more than 100 constituencies. So voter turnout may be satisfactory there. Training has been organised on priority basis at those seats where there is concern over voter turnout.

Former cabinet secretary Kabir Bin Anwar, who is responsible for coordinating the national election committee of Awami League, is leading this programme. IT expert Sufi Faruq Ibne Abubakar is the focal point of this offline campaign and Sayed Imam Baker is the assistant focal point.

Sufi Faruq Ibne Abubakar told Prothom Alo voters may be discouraged to go to polling stations for spreading disinformation, which is why party activists have been trained to encourage voters by providing right information. More than 200,000 activists have already been trained, and its main goal is to run campaigns door to door and ensure voters’ presence at polling stations, he added.

Twelve teams consisting of former leaders of Chattra League were formed across the country in September, with each team being responsible for overseeing five to seven organising districts.

List of campaigners were prepared by selecting leaders and activists of Awami League and its associate bodies from these districts. These campaigners received training gradually and former leaders of Chattra League, who are currently teaching at various universities, were trainers.

Political analysts, however, raised questions on the ruling party’s strategy to increase voter turnout by trained campaigners. Many analysts even think intimidation issues might come to fore in the case of bringing voters to polling stations by the party activists.

Former election commissioner and political analyst M Sakhawat Hossain told Prothom Alo there is an effort by the government to show a participatory election by bringing voters to polling stations by trained campaigners, but it cannot be called an inclusive election. Still questions will remain on the credibility of the election even after bringing voters from homes, he added.

Abdul Aziz, Correspondent, Jamalpur, contributed to this report.