The battle of the ballot in Barisal has turned into a fight between ‘jote’ and ‘mahajote’, between the BNP-led alliance and the ruling Grand Alliance.
There are three mayoral candidates in the fray, but two of them are important: Ahsan Habib Kamal, who is supported by the 18-party alliance, and Shawkat Hossain Hiron, who is backed by the 14-party Grand Alliance. The city is virtually polarized between the candidates supported by the alliances led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League.
Leaders of the two leading parties are now in Barisal and are moving around round the clock, seeking votes for their respective candidates. But at the end of the day, all the three candidates are accusing each other of malpractices.
Sources in the Election Commission noted that in the previous Barisal City Corporation (BCC) elections, the AL has won once and the BNP once. Local MP and president of the city BNP unit, Mujibor Rahman, was elected the first BCC mayor in 2003. Advocate Enayet Pir Khan was the mayoral candidate of Nagorik Parishad in the BCC election of 2003 and was supported by the 14-party alliance. He got more than 30,000 votes and came second, defeated by a margin of around 10,000 votes.
In the second BCC election, Advocate Shawakat Hossain Hiron, a candidate of the Awami League-led 14-party alliance supported by a portion of the Jatiya Party, was elected mayor of the Barisal City Corporation. He defeated Progatishil Democratic Party candidate Sardar Sarfuddin Santu, supported by a part of the BNP, by a margin of 588 votes. Shawkat Hossain Hiron polled 46,796 votes while his nearest rival, Sarfuddin Santu, garnered 46,208 votes.
On the other hand, Ahsan Habib Kamal, the than expelled BNP president of the city unit, who was supported by a portion of the BNP-Jamaat alliance and a portion of the Jatiya Party, received 26,416 votes while Ebaidul Huq Chan, former district BNP secretary, supported by a faction of the BNP-led alliance, polled 19,626 votes.
As a result, the BCC election of 2013 has turned into a ‘do or die’ match for the ruling AL and main Opposition BNP as well as their respective alliances.
Shawakat Hossain Hiron, the candidate supported by the ruling party, has accused his rival candidate Ahsan Habib Kamal of failure to develop the city in his time.
-With The Independent input
