Mirza Fakhrul, Amir Khasru freed, what about the others?

From the words of Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader it was clear that BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir would be getting bail.

Speaking at a press briefing on 9 February at the party president’s office in Dhanmondi, he said, “As far as I know, he has been granted bail in several cases. One of the cases, concerning the attack on the Chief Justice’s resident, has posed as a bit of problem for him. The government also doesn’t want anyone behind bars without trial. Just because he hasn’t been granted bail doesn’t mean he won’t be granted bail in future.” (Bangla Tribune).

On Thursday afternoon Mirza Fakhrul and the party’s standing committee member Amir Khasru emerged from the Keraniganj central jail to be received with flowers by the party leaders and activists. Mirza Fakhrul announced that the movement for democracy would continue until victory was won. He also said that BNP has not been harmed by not joining the one-sided government. It is the government that has been harmed.

On 9 February the Awami League general secretary had said that BNP has made a mistake by not contesting in the election and that they would have to pay the price for this mistake for a long time.

It would not be a matter of such worry if incurring harm and paying the price was restricted to these two parties. But given the manner in which the 7 January election took place, it is democracy that has been harmed.  A large section of the people were deprived from their voting rights. How many seats the parties won in this election is not as important as whether the voters had the option to chose candidates of their choice. Basically the contest was between the ‘boat’ candidates and independent candidates also of Awami League.

No matter how many cases are filed against the BNP leaders and activists, the actual objective of imprisoning them was to get the election done with. And the government did that, no matter by what means. Awami League leaders claim that the voters did not boycott the election at the call of BNP. However, it is also true that the voters did not throng to the vote centres with any enthusiasm and interest.

An election means an open opportunity to freely choose from one’s options. That opportunity was not there in the 7 January election. There was the ‘boat’ candidates to the right of the polling centres and independent candidates to the left. Even the 11 candidates who won from Jatiya Party, had the blessings of the ruling party. Awami League leaders say that this situation arose because BNP did not participate in the polls. BNP leaders responded that the government did not want BNP to join the polls. Both the contentions hold truth.

When BNP realised that the government was determined to keep them away from the elections, should they have remained involved in the election process by any means? In 2006-07 Awami League refused to accept KM Hasan as chief advisor, or even Iajuddin Ahmed in his stead. Even so, they did not keep away from the election process from the start. They remained with the process right up till the time to withdraw nomination.

This time BNP was very confident about its political clout and the leaders and activists were left stunned when they dropped out of the election process.

The recently released two leaders have said that the movement will continue until democracy is established. It is hard to tell how far the party leaders and activists will be reassured.

The people had wide support for the peaceful movement that BNP had been carrying out up until 28 October last year. Such a long stretch of peaceful movement is unprecedented in Bangladesh. BNP needs to examine where things went wrong. If they realised that a trap was being set or them by the government centering their rally, why did they step into that trap?

There was a sense of despair among the many leaders and activists of BNP after 28 October. This was because the leadership has assured them that the elections would be halted. They did not realise that no party or alliance in Bangladesh could ever thwart an election by means of a movement. One-sided or voterless, whatever it may be, once an election is held, it is hard to reverse it.

One of the few mistakes in BNP’s movement was not to have an alternative on hand. They demanded the government’s resignation, but had not thought of what to do if the government did not resign. The second mistake was that they not only rejected the government, but rejected the election commission too. Another perception entered the public mind was that BNP relied more on foreign friends rather than the people. Thirdly, they considered foreign friends to be just of one country. They ignored other friends who had become important in geopolitics. By openly opposing the stand of Russia and China regarding the election, they became more friendless. In the fourth place, the sudden call for non-cooperation from BNP caught not only the public off-guard, but even the party’s leaders and activists, as well as the alliance partners, were puzzled.

All said and done, in no way do the flaws and failures in BNP’s movement justify the one-sided election of 7 January. If the government really wants political stability in the country, if it wants no clashes on the streets, then it should free BNP men from all the false and fabricated cases. It was a bad precedent to pick them up from their homes at night and accuse them in fresh cases. Does keeping thousands of BNP men behind bars even after the election mean that the government fears BNP even though it is inactive on the streets at the moment?

The national election over, the election commission is now preparing for the local government elections. On 9 March the by-elections to the office of mayor will be held in Mymensingh City Corporation and Cumilla City Corporation. They in May the upazila parishad elections will be held in four phases.

The question is, what will BNP do? BNP’s decision had been not to take part in any election under this government, even though BNP leaders did participate as independent candidates in the city corporation polls and several other elections. Some even won. There will be no party symbols in the upazila polls this time. In such a case, BNP should relent and allow its leaders to contest independently. Let me share an experience about the Cumilla City Corporation election. In this election held two years ago, two BNP leaders contested as independent candidates against the ‘boat’ candidate. While their combined votes were one and a half times more than that of the Awami League candidate, the ‘boat’ won. There will be no symbol in the mayoral election this time. Two ‘expelled’ leaders of BNP will be contesting against the Awami League-backed candidate. Let’s see the outcome.

* Sohrab Hassan is joint editor at Prothom Alo and a poet. He can be contacted at [email protected]

* This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir