When Faiazul Huq Raju, the ‘independent’ candidate for the Barisal-2 parliamentary seat, left his residence to take a quick tour of the 134 polling centres across the constituency, almost everything seemed to be in order.
And when polling began at 8 am today – as it did across 300 constituencies throughout Bangladesh, featuring “dummy” candidates and characterised by gross electoral irregularities and malpractices, voters trickled into the election centres in ones and twos.
“Voter turnout did pick up as time went by,” said Salma Huq, Raju’s wife who had thrown herself into her husband’s poll campaign earnestly since she “believed that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina would keep her promise of a free and fair election”.
Suddenly, slightly after 11 am, hordes of men under the leadership of a local tough Hafizur Rahman Iqbal and Amal Mallik, descended on three polling centres in the Hindu-dominated Harta village.
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“They roughed up and beat up our polling agents and party supporters, dismantled our organisational set-up and then launched into quickly stamping on the Awami League’s boat symbol,” Salma Huq told the Northeast News over phone.
Raju’s electoral rival for the Barisal-2 seat is Workers’ Party Chairman, 83-year-old Rashed Khan Menon who is contesting the polls on the ‘boat’ symbol. He is contesting under the ‘eagle’ symbol.
The threats, intimidation, violence and vote rigging, including forcible ballot stuffing and rampant stamping on the Awami League’s symbol, were symptomatic of an ‘election’ that has been reduced to a farce even as the contestants are ruling party nominees and ‘independent’ candidates who, till the other day, were part of the Awami League.
“Sheikh Hasina unleashed a genie over which neither she nor her other party leaders had any control as report after report of mass rigging, violence, threats, intimidation and internecine fights erupted across most of the 300 constituencies,” said a Dhaka-based political analyst and civil society leader who did not want to identified for fear of reprisal.
At Harta, a 69-year-old Hindu retired school teacher and a Raju supporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity, informed that around 11:30 am large groups of men led by Iqbal and Harta Union Chairman Amal Mallik appeared at three polling centres.
“They chased and beat up the voters who were standing in queues to exercise their franchise. The voters and electoral officials and Raju’s political agents were driven out of the polling booths as men and women, mostly Hindus, ran helter-skelter. No police or other security personnel stopped the miscreants,” said the Harta resident who is a close election campaigner for Raju.
Harta, under Ujirpur upazila, has nine municipal wards. It is a predominantly Hindu village with about 7,000 voters across three thickly-populated zones.
It took no more than 15 minutes for the Iqbal and Mallik-led gangs to empty out the polling booths as they allegedly took to mass stamping of ballot papers before stuffing them into the ballot boxes.
Video clips of men claiming to have cast seven to eight to ten votes each are in the possession of Northeast News.
These men appear to be quote nonchalant as they claimed to have cast more than one ballot each. There are other video clips that feature men bearing injuries from lathi blows rained on them Iqbal and Mallik’s “goons who were outsiders”, another Harta villager told Northeast News over phone.
When Northeast News called Mallik, he denied he had taken part in threatening, intimidating, beating up and driving away voters at the Harta polling centres.
Violence was also reported from other polling centres across the nine wards. “I was not involved in these things,” Mallik said, but quickly disconnected when it was pointed out that he and Iqbal led the gangs into the polling stations.
“For the past six days, the voters in Harta and nearby villages were being intimidated and threatened. Earlier 16 motorcycles belonging to Raju’s supporters were burnt and his workers were chased and beaten up across Barisal-2 constituency. Many Menon supporters even resorted to firing and open display of firearms,” Salma Huq said, adding, “Is this a fair election? What happened today is very unfortunate”.
Menon was unfazed with the allegations and complaints against his supporters and Awami League cadres. Speaking to Northeast News over phone, Menon said, “There has been violence in Barisal-2. Everything is very peaceful. In fact, this is the most peaceful election in Bangladesh’s history. Show me the photographs and videos,” Menon said as he quickly disconnect the phone line.
