Nearly 90 per cent of the candidates who contested in the 12th parliamentary elections from the Jatiya Party have lost their security money as they failed to secure a certain number of votes in the polls.
Following key opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP) boycotting the election, JaPa was the second largest party after the governing Awami League that contested the general election.
However, this loss of security money for a large number of JaPa candidates is not new. Around 86 per candidates of JaPa in the three previous parliamentary elections, from 9th to the 11th, lost their security money in the seats that were not compromised with Awami League.
Jatiya Party fielded candidates in 263 constituencies in the election that was held in 299 seats. Of those seats, the party made a compromise with the Awami League in 26 constituencies. Of those, the party could win in 11 seats. JaPa could not win even one seat outside of the compromised seats.
An analysis of the poll results revealed that 236 JaPa candidates out of 263 lost their security money. Those 236 seats include seven seats compromised with the AL. Those are: Nilphamari-3, Rangpur-1, Bogura-3, Pirojpur-3, Dhaka-18, Brahmanbaria-2 and Chattogram-8. JaPa candidates contested against the Awami League leaders who took part in the election as independent candidates in the seats.
As per the Representation of People Order (RPO), a candidate has to deposit Tk 20,000 as security money before contesting the election. If the candidate fails to get at least one eighth of the votes, he loses the money.
The poll results analysis also shows that only 16 JaPa candidates outside of the 11, who won the election, could garner votes sufficient to save the security money.
As many as 195 JaPa candidates got less than 5,000 votes in the 12th general elections. Among them, 88 got less than 1,000. However, three candidates of the party got over 100,000 votes and got elected as MPs.
Overall, the Jatiya Party candidates got 21,68,221 votes across the country which is 4.33 per cent of the total votes cast in the 12th parliamentary election.
Asked, JaPa secretary general Mujibul Haque claimed to Prothom Alo that over 200 candidates of the party quit the election before the polling as they could not stay in the field due to monetary and muscle power of the AL and independent candidates. Neither was there any help from the administration. This led to such shambolic performance in voting.
However, Prothom Alo and a few other media outlets reported that 19 JaPa candidates quit the polls.
There was no Awami League candidate in almost all the constituencies where JaPa candidates won in the 9th, 10th and 11th parliamentary elections. Most of the JaPa candidates in other constituencies lost their security money.
The JaPa took part in the general election of 2008 as part of the grand alliance led by the Awami League. Although the JaPa didn’t form any alliance in the general elections in 2014 and 2018, it negotiated with the ruling party over seat sharing.
According to Election Commission (EC) sources, some 178 JaPa candidates contested the 11th national polls. Of them, 145 lost their security money. They negotiated with the Awami League over 37 electoral seats during the 11th national election. The JaPa candidates won in 22 constituencies that time. There was no Awami League candidate in any of those 22 constituencies.
However, as many as 161 BNP candidates also lost their security money in the 11th general elections. BNP alleged that ballot papers were stuffed the night before the election by the ruling party activists.
Before that, some 153 candidates won the polls uncontested in the 2014 elections as opposition party BNP boycotted it. The Jatiya Party negotiated with the ruling party for seats that time too. It fielded candidates in some 86 constituencies. According to the EC, the JaPa candidate lost security money in 41 constituencies that time. Some 34 JaPa candidates won the polls in the 10th parliamentary elections. Of them, 20 were elected uncontested and there were no Awami League candidates in the remaining constituencies where JaPa won.
The Jatiya Party fielded candidates in some 49 constituencies in the 9th general election. Several JaPa candidates contested the poll with the boat symbol as part of the grand alliance. However, 13 of the JaPa candidates failed to secure enough votes to save the security money.
The vote bank of the JaPa gradually declined in the next three polls. The party has won in only 11 constituencies this time. That too would have been hard, hadn’t the Awami League compromised those seats for the JaPa, political analysts said.