AL worries about youth voters this time

Attacks by the ruling party men on the students demonstrating for safe road and their harrassment by the police have made them and their families feel insulted, some of the Bangladesh Awami League (AL) leaders believe.

Already, they conclude, the state's treatment of the quota protesters -- suppression of their demonstration, lawsuits against them and their arrest, as well as non-fulfilment of the pledge to abolish the quota -- left the students and jobseekers in a state of resentment.

However, the excesses committed by the ruling AL's student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) surpassed the actions of the police at the later part of the 10-day demonstration. The protesters, mostly juveniles, did not expect that the BCL men would really attack them.

In such a context, leaders of the AL and its 14-party alliance are now apprehensive if the youth aged between 18 and 24 years would vote for the AL and its allies in the next parliamentary elections.

It is the young force that was believed to have presented the AL and allies a landslide victory in 2008.

Currently, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the country's 15 per cent people are aged between 18 and 24, meaning each of the 300 constituencies has approximately 50,000 voters of this age group. And most of them are students.

Desperate to win the next general elections, too, the ruling camp leaders want to take remedial measures but do not know what they would be, some of them admitted.

“It's true that the students demonstrating for quota reform and safe roads returned home with a deep scar. This may profoundly affect the next national elections,” social welfare minister Rashed Khan Menon told Prothom Alo.

He felt that this issue cannot be overlooked and that the government and the 14-party alliance would have to take certain measures to address their grievances.

Menon, also president of Workers Party, said he would talk to the alliance leader Sheikh Hasina and request her to take steps towards that end.

The safe road movement began after two students of Shaheed Ramiz Uddin School and College were killed in a road accident in the capital on 29 July. Some of the protesters came under attack even after the government's endorsement of a draft law on road transport on 6 August.

A number of of the demonstrators were injured and some arrested the way quota protesters were detained earlier. The quota reformists have still been confused about the steps that the government would really take in course of time about the reservation in the public services.

A presidium member of Awami League, seeking anonymity, said despite certain misgivings, they believe, the hard-core supporters of the AL would cast vote in favour of 'boat', the AL's election symbol.

The AL leader, however, is a bit confused whether the floating young voters would be tilted to the AL candidates.

Terming every vote important, the AL presidum member insisted that some actions must be taken to assure the youths. Otherwise, the leader admitted, there could be problems for the AL and the alliance in the next general elections.

Some AL and alliance leaders informally expressed their annoyance at the latest arrest of 12 students by the detectives in the capital in this connection.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who is also president of the AL, would be apprised of the concern for the ruling alliance, the leaders added.

*The report has been rewritten in English by Shameem Reza