The electoral rout is undoubtedly a wake-up call for Sheikh Hasina, the Awami League and the country’s secularist and nationalist forces.  It is high time they closed ranks and stood as  one group, or else they will be confined to the limbo of history, with the achievements of the Liberation War finding mention in unread pages.

Six months ahead of Bangladesh’s tenth parliamentary elections, the drubbing that Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League-led 14-party alliance has suffered at the hands of traditional arch rival, Begum Khaleda Zia’s BNP-led 18-party Islamic alliance in the Rajshahi, Khulna, Sylhet and Barisal civic elections signifies grave portents for the country’s future.

The Islamists triumphed in all major cities with unexpectedly high victory margins. This signifies that secular pro-liberation Bengali nationalist forces that represent the Joy Bangla slogan and its inherent ideals are losing ground to those that are intent on turning  the country into an Islamic state with its attendant laws, flag and anthem.

Surprisingly and with a degree of short-sightedness, the government of Sheikh Hasina is trying to pass off the BNP alliance’s victory as a triumph of  democracy. For a mass-based secular party like the Awami League, which is the bulwark of the country’s pro-liberation forces, conceding defeat of this humiliating extent and yet hailing it as a victory for democracy may be a clever strategy to underplay the rout.

 Of course, the purpose of adopting this unusual stance could be to infuse popular confidence in the Awami League government’s ability to conduct the parliamentary poll in a free and fair manner and thereby take the wind out of the Opposition’s campaign sails... to the extent that no free and fair poll is possible without a neutral government in power.

The question now doing the rounds in Dhaka is whether it was to ensure a sweeping victory for the Opposition that Hasina’s coalition did not campaign cohesively and purposefully to rebut the unfounded, if rabid, charge that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had killed more than 2,500 of their supporters and “carted” their bodies off to Hindusthan on 5 May when they had laid siege to Dhaka demanding Hasina’s resignation, an end to the war crimes trial, and replacing the Constitution with Sharia law.

The Chittagong-based Hefajat Islam (a Saudi and Pakistan-backed Islamic NGO that proclaims itself as the guardian of Islam in Bangladesh) and its mullahs, along with the Jamaat and the Islamist section of the BNP, had carried out a vicious, intensive house-to-house campaign that created religious frenzy and projected Sheikh Hasina and other secularists as infidels in the eyes of Muslim voters.

The Islamic card had never been played so brazenly as happened in the mayoral election. Muslim voters were told that an Awami League victory would mean the exile of Islam. They even quoted Begum Zia and her new-found ally ~ the legendary freedom fighter Kader Siddiqi ~ as warning the faithfuls that the mosques would be converted to temples. which would resonate with rhythmic beats of dhak.

 The Hefajatis, who had assured Hasina that they would never indulge in politics, conducted a robust campaign among Muslims that the young generation of secularists, who were championing the cause of Joy Bangla, were about to turn the country into a land of atheists with the Awami League’s complicity. They made Muslims swear by the Koran that they would never vote for an anti-Islamic party like the Awami League.

Also, as in the days of East Pakistani, Hindu voters were threatened with exile to Hindustan and were warned that a 2001-kind of onslaught awaited them if they voted for the Awami League .The Islamists justified their threat by saying that in a Muslim-majority Bangladesh, minorities, who represent only 10 per cent of the population, should have no say in the country’s electoral politics. Only Muslims, they claimed, deserve a decisive say and the minorities should not harbour political ambitions.  It was these groups that had carried out large-scale attacks on minorities in March and April, destroying their properties and places of worship. To buy peace, a large section of these minorities either voted for the BNP in the mayoral poll or abstained.

The Awami League was unable to counter the communal campaign because there are elements in the party who want to pander to the latter for fear of alienating the Muslim vote. These elements also have close business and social ties with the Hefajatis and the Jamaat. It is this section of the party that always exerts pressure on Hasina to give in to Islamist demands to buy peace.

It forced Hasina to persuade the Hefajatis not  to lay siege to Dhaka, which they flatly refused while she gave in to most of their demands, chiefly that the stage of the Ganajagaran Mancha in Shahbagh Square be demolished  and those spearheading the secular Bengali nationalist movement be arrested for defaming Islam and its Prophet. Her own party leaders forced her to compromise with the Islamists and turned her against her natural allies, the secularists of the Shahbagh movement. The upshot was that a large section of the younger generation, with  secular and nationalist inclinations and who used to view the Awami League as its ally, were alienated and to the extent that they boycotted the civic poll.

The Awami League’s organisational paralysis was reflected in its poor election campaign. The 14-party alliance exists only in name and it has so far held no meeting since the last parliamentary poll. Some of the alliance partners, like former President HM Ershad and Workers’ Party chief Rashed Khan Menon, have not been accorded the respect that they imagine they deserve. No effort was made to highlight the government’s achievements, especially its poverty-alleviation drive and its tremendous strides in the public health and power sectors, which have earned international praise. Unfortunately, Sheikh Hasina represents both the party and the organisation’s face.

As a result, the sins of her corrupt party leaders and ministers have turned into a curse for her. And she has to bear the cross on their behalf.

The anti-incumbency factors, especially the corruption involving some of her important ministers, stopped the World Bank from funding her government’s most ambitious project ~ the construction of a multi-modal bridge across the mighty Padma.

 This has had a negative impact on voters. Also, the electorate reacted negatively to their heavy losses in investments in dubious companies that received huge financial support from the government.

The growing divide between the Awami League leadership and the country’s powerful civil society also helped its rivals to buttress  their communal campaign. It was civil society’s campaign that had contributed substantially to the Awami League’s  two-thirds majority in the 2008 parliamentary poll.

The electoral rout is undoubtedly a wake-up call for Sheikh Hasina, the Awami League and the country’s secularist and nationalist forces. It is high time they closed ranks and stood as one group, or else they will be confined to the limbo of history, with the achievements of the liberation war finding mention in unread pages.

Right now all attention is focussed on the outcome of todays’ Ghazipur (very close to Dhaka) civic poll. Here too the BNP, Jamat and the Hefajat are jointly carrying out a strident religious campaign in a bid to create neurosis among Muslim voters.

(The writer is Editor, Dainik Statesman)

Ends/AMA/06/07/13