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PLEASURE IS ALL MINE

Rise of far right in the polls?

Like it or not, it seems like the first wave if you consider more than 300 seats that will be up for grabs in the remaining upazila elections.

SHAH HUSAIN IMAM
during the countrywide blockades, and the court's ruling on cancellation of party registration which is now before the Appellate Division for final adjudication. In spite of all this, the party's good showing as partner of BNP which had been under considerable pressure both internally and externally to delink itself from JI is a political statement that cannot be brushed aside.
In any case, this shows how little a bearing national politics has on the local level elections. However much the political parties may have hyped their backing of certain candidates, the fact remains that local factors determined the voter choices at the polls as these always did in the past. Some results will support this contention. Jamaat won in Nilphamari and Gopalganj, famous for their high-profile AL association. Conversely, Ashashoni upazila of Satkhira, known as a stronghold of Jamaat, has elected an AL-backed candidate. Abhoynagar upazila which hogged the news headlines because of minority persecution has chosen a
That the bnp-led alliance fared better than the ruling AL-led alliance in the first phase of the upazila polls was not entirely unexpected. But what has surprised many is the 12 chairman's posts bagged by the Jamaat-e-Islami. Let's not forget its tainted image centring around its terrorisation campaign BNP-backed candidate as chairman. Surprisingly, two of the BNP candidates who had walked out midway through the polls have come out winners. You can even explain this apparent deviation by factoring in local predilections.
Multiple contestants including party rebels in the fray on the one hand gave a wider range of choices to the electorate and, on the other, the votes that could have gone either to the winning or the losing side in straight fights were split among many. It was highly competitive but may not have been a true measuring rod of relative popularity of one candidate vis-a-vis another. Jamaat may have come out a gainer amid multiple contests.
The constitutionally party-less character of the upazila polls divested the political parties from ensuring single candidate to stand in election in contrast to forcing the rebel candidates to stand down in the national elections as provided for in the amended RPO.
There you face the debate over whether we retain the party-less character of local elections or we allow party nominated candidates to stand for the elections, the latter being the practice in India. Time has come to shed the facade of so-called apolitical local elections behind which we press all the party buttons so as to transform these into elections to be fought on party tickets.
Just to measure Jamaat's rise you have only to recap the 467 upazila polls held in 2009 in which Jamaat secured a total of 20 seats of chairman. But this time in 97 upazila polls Jamaat has bagged 12 seats. Like it or not, it seems like the first wave if you consider more than 300 seats that will be up for grabs in the remaining upazila elections.
The right and far right camp would, however, like to interpret the results as a reflection of pent up emotion among their supporters relieving itself at the first opportunity of participation in an election.
In this sequel, the message that ought to hit home is that the ruling camp is given to a flair for handling ideological extremism in a way which is perceived at the mass level as being anti-religion. Surely, this is not intended but those who exploit religion for politics are likely to impress on the gullible that that is indeed the case. It is not enough to merely assert that Islam literally means peace, we have to develop a fully-fledged ideological stance based on the quintessence of Islam. Then we disseminate it through an involvement of progressive Islamic scholars who strike a responsive chord in Muslims with a modernist temper.
As a matter of fact, in England highly knowledgeable champions of Islam grumble over the lack of initiative by middle grounders who have seemingly resigned to the perverse and sustained propaganda by a minority of at best 20% of the world's Muslims. The silent majority should be convincingly eloquent to spread the true spirit of Islam which has no place for terrorism and extremism, whether covert or overt.
Along with other countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, known for their moderate and liberal outlook, we may strategise to fend off obscurantism with the inner strength of our religion employed with a new civilisational vigour.
The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star.
E-mail: husain.imam@thedailystar.net