AL seeks ‘single seat’ majority in next polls

The Awami League is focusing on achieving just a ‘single seat majority’ in the next parliament rather than mimicking the landslide victory that it won in the 2008 general elections.
The party’s high command is aiming to ensure victory in 151 seats by focusing on those constituencies in which it has done consistently well during the past elections, and by changing many of the party’s candidates, party insiders told New Age.
One of the presidium members of the party preferring anonymity told New Age that while the party’s focus was ‘151 seats’ in the coming general elections, it would seriously work for 200 seats.
‘This time we are not thinking about a big majority, we’re just thinking about a simple majority… majority by one seat will do,’ he said. ‘The contexts of 2008 and 2014 elections are not the same. In the 2008 polls, people gave their verdict against corruption and other misdeeds of the BNP-Jamaat and caretaker governments. But in the elections of 2014 they will give verdict evaluating the government’s performance,’ he said.
The member of the party’s core policy making body agreed that the AL-led government had made mistakes in running the administration during its nearly five year tenure and so it would not be wise to expect a landslide victory in the next elections.
Another member of the party presidium also wishing not to be named said that the party would conduct ‘a secret survey’ on the party’s strength and the performance of incumbent lawmakers.
After doing this, the party would create a strategy that would allow it at least a single seat majority in the next elections, he said.
AL insiders said the party high command was looking for new faces in at least 100 constituencies in the next general elections as this would increase the chances of victory as many incumbent lawmakers were unpopular due to claims of corruption, and their lack of contact with the grassroots.
Senior AL officials have already prepared a list of lawmakers who might be dropped from party nominations in the next elections, after surveys were conducted by different intelligence agencies and party leaders.
Another similar list would also be prepared following the party’s organisational tour that will take place from September 1 to 7, which would judge opinions of grassroots activists and ordinary voters by interviewing a cross section of people at each of the constituencies.
AL won only 62 seats in the 2001 parliamentary elections with BNP receiving 193, but in the subsequent 2008 elections AL received a landslide victory securing 230 out of the 300 seats with 48 per cent of the votes. BNP only won 30 seats.
Many grassroots, mid-level and senior leaders of AL told New Age that the BNP’s debacle in 2008 elections should have been a serious warning for the AL-led grand alliance government but it had not given it proper consideration and had almost run the country as the BNP-led alliance had done.
They said that people in 2008 had voted for the AL-led grand alliance with an expectation that it would remove the reign of terror that had existed in the country, eradicate corruption and extremism and create a change in political culture with massive development works being undertaken.
‘Whilst the AL-led government had become largely successful in curbing extremism, increasing food production and uplifting the education sector, in the past four years and a half of its tenure it was not that successful in checking corruption and political terrorism or bringing a change in the political culture according to people’s expectation,’ said Gazi Saleh Uddin, leader of Awami League-backed teachers’ forum and former general secretary of Chittagong University Teachers Association.
He said that if Awami League wanted to win the next polls it must resolve the party’s internal feuds and fulfill the election-pledges before going for elections.