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Tarique knew Nasir won't win Ctg polls

Star Report
Three months before the 2005 Chittagong City
Corporation polls, Tarique Rahman, the then BNP senior secretary general, had predicted that BNP candidate Mir Mohammad Nasiruddin would not win the race.
" [Tarique] Rahman told us in February Nasiruddin could not win," said a leaked US diplomatic dispatch sent toWashington on May 9,2005, after the polling hour was
over, but before the announcement of the final results.
Despite Tarique's prediction of the defeat, the then ruling BNP high-ups including Tarique stepped into the battle to ensure win of Nasiruddin, who was also the state minister for civil aviation and tourism.
"Almost too late, the BNP belatedly recognised that the Chittagong race was attracting attention as a warm-up for the general election and a referendum on the BNP's and AL's respective popularity. Motivated into action, the PMO [Prime Minister's Office] has now put its prestige on the line," commented the then US ambassador Harry K Thomas in Dhaka in the cable.
"The last time BNP did that, we got the Dhaka 10 "Festival of Fraud." At this point it seems hard to bet against the BNP candidate, especially if the race is close but at poll's close the race is neck and neck."
The cable said Nasiruddin, a former CCC mayor and
former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was a strong supporter of the BNP's alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami.
Yet, his campaign was initially hindered by disinterest from key BNP leaders like Tarique Rahman, Khaleda Zia's eldersonandheir apparent, and her parliamentary affairs adviser Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, apparently because of local political rivalries.
"Rahman told us in February Nasiruddin could not win. Nasiruddin faced other handicaps: his formal nomination was late in coming; one faction of the IOJ [Islami Oikya Jote], the extremist member of the ruling coalition, initially fielded its own candidate; and Nasiruddin is a lackluster campaigner,” the cable said.
Ahead of the election, a flood of senior BNP and Jamaat leaders went to Chittagong to support Nasiruddin, the cable said, adding, at a huge rally on May 7, Tarique Rahman, the then
BNP secretary general Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, and firebrand Jamaat MP Delawar Hossain Sayedee urged Chittagong's 1.1 million voters to support Nasiruddin.
"Tarique invoked the blood sacrifices of his family in his appeal for the BNP candidates for mayor and ward commissioners. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, addressing a rally in western Bangladesh, charged a particular party with conspiring to derail Bangladesh's progress under heradministration. She urged Chittagonians to "unite to foil the conspiracy as you did the last polls by voting for the BNP-led alliance."
The cable said the race was too close to call with confidence. While AL-backed incumbent Mohiuddin Chowdhury retained, by most non-BNP accounts, greater popularity, BNP challenger Mohammad Nasiruddin jumped back into the race in the final few days thanks to a late surge of campaigning by
senior party leaders.
Tarique Rahman gave an emotional appeal for support, citing the assassination of his father. President Zia, in Chittagong in 1981 as proof of his family's blood ties to Chittagong.
"The election may boil down to the impression that PM Khaleda Zia wants to win more than Sheikh Hasina," the cable said.
About Nasiruddin's rival, the cable said since 1994, ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury has been mayor of the CCC.
Although the mayor's office is nominally non-party, Chowdhury was an AI. Central Executive Committee member.
"He [Mohiuddin] has a long anti-US track record, and his incendiary anti-foreign invest -ment/anti-US rhetoric in 2001 led the successful opposition to a proposal by a US film, SSA, to build a modem container port in Chittagong.
"Chowdhury also played to popular opposition to the war in Iraq, exceptionally high in
Chittagong because many entrepreneurial Chittagonians work in the Middle East, by vilifying US actions and raising money last summer for suspect Iraqi groups.
"After our discreet appeal to AL president Hasina, Chowdhury was told to clear with her any anti-USG statements, which effectively ended his USG bashing," the cable said.
Thomas in the cable said populist and charismatic with strong ties to labour and other civil groups, Chowdhury was widely seen as the front-runner, with some estimates giving him 60percentofthevote.
Thomas sent the cable to Washington before the election result was announced. His prediction proved right with the emphatic win for Mohiuddin over Nasiruddin leading both the then ruling BNP and the opposition AL to rethink their political future ahead of the ninth parliamentary polls which was originally duein early2007.