Gazipur rout: It is about the AL defeat, not the BNP win

Gazipur, often dubbed the second Gopalganj, crashed the AL out and returned a BNP candidate in what seems like a mini national election. It came in the wake of the electoral defeat of the ruling party in four major city corporations. The AL leaders were saying that the four defeats were needed to wake the party up from complacency and to take the elections seriously. The BNP also seemed gearing itself for defeat and it was doing advanced damage control by alleging rigging and harassment even before the election had been held. Although a contest was expected, nobody was expecting a rout of the AL candidate. It has put the national electoral calculations under a new light and it is not making the AL look good as the party seems rather clueless at the moment.

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AL's political position after 2001 has been to weaken the BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami combine and the war crimes trial strategy was part of that. The AL read it right that the trial supporters didn't want a fair trial but a revenge seeking mechanism. But this move was overdone as it created a public expectation from its urban middle class voters that revenge meant death by hanging. So when that didn't come through, the reaction came through the birth of 'Shahbagh Movement'. But this movement was essentially an urban middle class movement and by pushing it, the ruling party lost some of its mass characters and became a party leaning towards urban upper middle class values alienated from those outside the core. 

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The war crimes tribunal is not a national issue but the AL expected it to be a critical electoral factor which the five election results show was not so. The AL strategy of stigmatizing the BNP-JI alliance through the ICT has not worked the way it wanted to. Two factors influenced. 'Shahbagh', the Dhaka based 'second liberation war', put a lot of pressure on the AL which feared the rise of a 'third' force that might upset its position and it moved to overtake it by giving into crowd demands. This did deplete the JI and expanded its base in the cities but gave birth to Hifazat-e-Islam, primarily rural half literates which it had to deal with and finally with force. Hifazat has now become a national factor affecting voting unlike Shabagh which remains where it was. In this case, the AL was backing a wrong horse, maybe not even a horse but a smaller animal in the race.

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AL was also put in a spot with the astik-nastik issues. Clearly, some of the supporters went overboard and a few may have ventured into this territory but the point is that it didn't reflect the mainstream views of the Shahbagh Movement. However, the manipulation of the issue by the opposition was very effective and they managed to turn the political crisis into a religious one. However cynical the move and it was so, neither the movement nor the AL could remove the stigma that the movement had anti-Islamic overtones.

In this also the AL fell into its own trap. When it pounced and took over the Shahbagh Movement, it considered that move a success because the leadership came into its realm but in doing so it also became part of the anti-Islam stigma. Although the AL tried to retrieve the situation by arresting the bloggers — still not tried — the damage had already been done. It was again a situation of poor reading of political realities, its distance from its core supporters, the rural population and misunderstanding and underestimating the power of religion in people's lives. It never assessed the ability of the opposition to manipulate this element of public and private life to its advantage.

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The ruling party also underestimated the stink of corruption which now follows the AL everywhere. The AL has become identified with the Padma Bridge scandal, the largest international corruption scandal to hit Bangladesh ever. Instead of taking mitigating measures including a full blown investigation, it has shielded the guilty. The AL has blamed Yunus for all the troubles and dubbed Abul Hossain as a 'patriot'. Destiny, Hallmark and other loan and banking scams are impossible to write off as the AL hoped to and the government behaves as if these scandals don't touch it. The share market crash — why does it happen only when the AL is in power —  are events that have increased public resentment against the party and no number of Interpol warrants against Tariq Zia — who is corrupt — can let the AL off the hook. Did the AL expect all these mess to be taken care of by the ICT? If so it has been till now a bad gamble.

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The AL's internal management has been poor too. In the last few months, clashes between various tender seeking factions of the party in power have taken place even more frequently indicating that seeing the end of a term they are trying to make quick money. They have made the AL look vulnerable, a cadre base it doesn't control. But even politically, the 'rebel' candidates have begun to spring up and at Gazipur, Sheikh Hasina intervened to shut down Jehangir; but Azmatullah couldn't deliver the victory it sought. Rebel candidates also won two other polls held on the same day while the BNP won one. In Gazipur, the PM has backed a loser and that message will not be lost both to friends and enemies. Its ally Ershad has behaved erratically and couldn't help in Gazipur either.

Saying that it is the anti-incumbency factor that is behind the debacle is right but the reasons behind the factor are important too. Locally, many AL candidates have done well but nationally the AL has not. And thus local leaders have paid the price for national inefficiencies.

The AL leader Obaidul Quader has said that local and national elections are not the same and he is partly right but only partly. He has also said that the AL will ponder and decide what to do next before the final election nears but it needs to jive with what people think at this moment.

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What has the BNP done right to deserve such success? Not much really as opposition parties win depending on what the government party does.  People are voting against the AL, not voting for the BNP. But that's how it goes for a country where elections barely matter in improving the quality of life.

The national election has become loaded against the AL now. What can it do to change the situation? Not sure but agreeing to some opposition demands might be starters. It's increasingly seen as a party of intolerants. Expectation of the people from the AL is always high but it also fails more regularly.

So what happens to the 15th amendment? It kicked off the instability phase and the BNP protested fearing rigging but what will they say now? They are winning. So are they going to refuse a winning streak? BNP is now caught in its own trap which of course some say was created by the AL. Asking for a caretaker government when they are winning heavily doesn't seem sensible but then who can say what is really going on. But most important is to note that people are unhappy with the AL and that is being displayed on the street and in the polls. The public don't expect life to be changed by elections but they would like to say what they think of the party under whose government they live.

The AL takes the people for granted although it keeps getting hurt by taking that position so many times.

The public has started to speak but what they will say next remains to be seen. This is not the final verdict.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist, activist and writer.