Opinion: What BNP withdrawal means

With the withdrawal of all three BNP backed mayoral candidates from the Dhaka city north, Dhaka city south and Chittagong city corporation elections by noon today, the national politics is back to square one.

The supporters and workers of these three candidates have been facing intimidations from the ruling party men and the police since the campaigns kicked in three weeks ago. Their campaigns also came under attack in places on different occasions.

BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia on Sunday told the press that the ruling party, with help of the administration was set to massively rig the election and if that happens, her party would go for fresh agitation.

Today’s election started peacefully in the morning. But behind this peaceful environment was the widespread absence of pro-BNP campaigners and agents of the pro-BNP candidates. They have been intimidated so much that they did not turn up at the polling centres.

As the hours passed, reports of vote rigging started popping up from different centres. The reporters of The Daily Star themselves saw stuffing of ballot papers by the ruling party men in presence of police in Dhaka College, Dhaka Government Girls School and many other places.

All the while, pro-BNP mayoral candidates started complaining about widespread vote rigging. By 12:30 noon, BNP announced its withdrawal from the city polls through a press conference.

Was it the right decision?

The BNP -- which had boycotted last year’s national election and had been largely taking strategically wrong steps ever since (including the non-stop blockade from January and sneaky violent attacks on commoners to enforce never ending hartals) -- had no other option at this point.

In this video grab, a group of BCL men are seen putting seals on ballots while one is seen stuffing a ballot box at a polling booth of Dhaka College.

It wanted to participate in this election to measure its own popularity vs the ruling party’s popularity. But the election environment did not allow a fair competition.

Khaleda Zia also said on Sunday that BNP also wanted to prove to the world that a fair election under the Awami League government was impossible. The party’s withdrawal will now back her claim to the world.

For the Awami League-- which has been not giving a damn to what BNP thought or wanted for the last several years—the withdrawal is most likely expected or even desired.

For the sake of argument, if the BNP could win all three mayoral positions in a peacefully held election—would that have reduced the ruling party’s power? No. But the ruling party knows that it is not about the legal power—but it is a question about the moral victory or moral defeat. The ruling party men simply are not ready to accept even the possibility of a moral defeat. This is why such vote rigging had taken place.

We can now see where it is going. The BNP would again resort to yet another agitation and the ruling party would resort to yet another bulldozing strategy to suppress it and show the nation who the Alpha force is. And the people will continue to live between a rock and a hard place. Lets’ get used to it.