BNP councillor candidates blame party weakness, intimidation

Bangladesh Nationalist Party-backed councillor candidates in February 1 elections to Dhaka South City Corporation blamed their organisational weakness as well as the government’s vote rigging, torture and harassment for their defeat in the polls.

They made their observation in a view-exchange meeting between BNP and the party’s DSCC councillor candidates at a community centre at Naya Paltan in the capital on Sunday.

Addressing the programme, the councillor candidates narrated how the government using its police and party leaders and activists had ‘robbed’ them off their victory.

They said that the ruling party men ousted their polling agents from centres and did not allow the known BNP faces to gather near the polling stations as the party was weak organisationally, the thana and ward committees remained mostly inactive and even some local leaders acted against the party candidates for local interests.

They said that many of their voters did not come to the polling stations as they felt insecure and believed that the election would not be free and fair.

Almost all of them pointed out that the AL men, standing beside electronic voting machine adjacent to or in the secret voting booth, themselves cast votes for their candidates only after the voters opened the ballots by giving their fingerprint.

‘The voters only opened the ballots by giving their fingerprints and the AL men completed their votes as per their wish,’ said Saleha Akhter, a BNP backed candidate from reserved seat no 24.

‘We could not protect our voters,’ she said.

Gendaria thana BNP president and councillor candidate for ward 40 Mokbul Islam Khan also blamed BNP’s lack of planning and the gap between senior leaders and grassroots activists for their defeat.

He expressed his dissatisfaction as the senior leaders along with activists did not lay siege to the Shilpakala Academy, the temporary polls result announcement centre, as they took 10 hours to announce the results, though it needed only one to two hours to announce the result if EVM was used.

‘Actually the election commission took their time for result manipulation,’ said Rabiul Islam Dipu, ward no 52 councillor candidate.

He blamed grouping in the party in his area as one of the major reasons for his defeat.

Ward no 35 councillor candidate Yakub Sarkar stressed the need for strengthening the party and not to participate in any election using EVM as it was not trusted by the people and rigging could be managed easily using the machine.

Presided over by BNP standing committee member Khandaker Mosharrof Hossain, the meeting was also addressed by its leaders Mirza Abbas, Iqbal Hasan Mahmud Tuku, Abdus Salam, Habib-un Nabi Khan Sohel and DSCC mayoral candidate Ishraque Hossain among others.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net