City govt polls go political
Courtesy New Age 6/8/08 Khadimul Islam
Political leaders and activists won all the mayoral posts and most of the posts of councillor in Monday’s elections to four city corporations and nine municipalities, marking the political character of local government polls despite efforts of the military-controlled interim government and the Election Commission to keep the polls non-partisan.
The Awami League won all the four city mayoral posts and eight of the total nine posts of municipal mayor. The other post of municipal mayor went to a BNP leader. And all the nearest rivals were also from political parties.
Sixteen leaders of two major political parties — the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party — won the four city mayoral posts, bagging 86 per cent of the votes cast. Thirty other candidates, who are from other political parties or are non-partisan, bagged the remaining 14 per cent of the votes.
In the four city corporations, of the total 118 posts of councillor, the Awami League won 37, BNP 53, Jamaat-e-Islami 4, Jatiya Party 2, Workers Party 1 and Communist Party 1; 20 other posts went to independent candidates.
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In Sylhet, out of the total 27 posts, the Awami League won 12, BNP 10, Jamaat 3 and Workers Party 1; only one of the posts went to an independent candidate.
In Rajshahi, out of the total 30 posts, the Awami League won 9, BNP 13, Communist Party 1 and independent candidates 7.
Awami League candidates bagged the mayoral post in four city corporations —Rajshahi,
The Sylhet mayor-elect is Badaruddin Kamran,
The returning officers concerned early Tuesday announced the unofficial polls results. The Election Commission will publish the results in a gazette notification in a day or two.
Unofficial results show Kamran as mayor-elect with a wide margin over rival BNP candidate AFM Kamal. Kamran bagged 1,15,436 votes and Kamal 32,097.
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In Rajshahi, Liton bagged 98,360 votes and Mosaddek Hossain Bulbul 74,550 votes.
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Asked about the comment of the elected persons, especially city mayors, as the commission advocated honest and competent candidates, the chief election commissioner, ATM Shamsul Huda, said, ‘We can only hope that good candidates will win, but the people will need to come forward.’
He said many people had expected new faces would come through the elections, but again, the old politicians were elected. ‘People voted for the people they thought good and competent and they were elected. Ultimately, we have to accept people’s verdict.’
The mayoral posts of eight municipalities went to the Awami League while the BNP won one in the first round of local government elections held under the state of emergency.
Unofficial results show Awami League candidates were elected mayor of Sitakunda municipality in Chittagong, Golapganj in Sylhet, Naohata in Rajshahi, Sreepur in Gazipur, Phulbaria in Mymensingh and Shariatpur, Chuadanga, Manikganj and Shariatpur district headquarters. The BNP candidate won the mayoral post of the Dupchanchia municipality in Bogra.
No major incidents of violence were reported from any of the municipalities, which saw a turnout even going up to 95 per cent in cases.
The Awami League fielded candidates for mayoral posts and the BNP officially stayed off the polls. But both the parties saw more than one candidate in almost all the municipalities.
The New Age correspondent in
According to the unofficial results of all the 13 polling centres, Shafi bagged 12,170 votes and his nearest contestant Abu Kalam Azad, a BNP leader, got 4,213 votes. A total of 21,287 out of 25,171 voters cast their vote.
The correspondent in Sylhet said Zakaria Ahmed Paplu of the Awami League was declared mayor-elect of the Golapganj municipality.
Zakaria polled 5,520 votes while his nearest rival Sirajul Jabbar Chowdhury, also of the Awami League, got 3,512 votes.
Jahangir Alam was elected mayor of the Dupchanchia municipality in Bogra with a margin of 2,209 votes over his nearest rival Nurul Haque Talukder.
Jahangir Alam, general secretary of the Dupchanchia unit Bangladesh Nationalist Party, bagged 4,893 votes.
The upazila unit Jatiya Party president Abdus Samad bagged 1,577 votes, upazila unit BNP president Abdul Latif 1226 votes, the upazila unit BNP;s organising secretary Belal Hossain 1,161 votes and the district Juba League president Ahammedur Rahman Biplob got 1,091 votes.
Sources in the election control room said voters’ turnout in the Dupchanchia municipality polls was 94.17 per cent.
The correspondent in Shariatpur said Abdur Rab Munshi of the Awami League was declared elected as the municipality mayor. Rab polled 10,436 votes while his nearest rival Sardar AKM Nasiruddin, a BNP leader, bagged 8,288 votes.
Awami League leader Golam Kibria was elected the Phulbaria municipality mayor. Kibria bagged 3,692 votes while BNP leader Chand Mahmud bagged 3,409 in the elections.
The correspondent in Gazipur said Awami League leader Anisur Rahman was elected the Sreepur municipality mayor, bagging 17,805 votes while BNP leader Nurul Islam got 7,670 votes.
In Chuadanga, Awami League leader Reazul Islam Joarder was elected mayor. He got 25,592 votes while BNP leader Khandker Abdul Jabber bagged 18,495 votes. The correspondent in Manikganj said the detained Awami League leader Ramzan Ali was elected mayor of the Manikganj municipality. He won 12,008 votes and his nearest rival Nasiruddin Ahmed of BNP got 8,947 votes.
The correspondent in Rajshahi said Awami League candidate Abdul Gafur Sarker was elected mayor of the Naohata municipality. He bagged 16,606 votes while BNP candidate Mokbul Hossain got 8,795.
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