Small is beautiful only when there is a political crisis!
In the past when there was any political crisis centering the national elections, the small parties emerged as useful and important for the regimes
The numbers alone do not tell the full story.
Participation of 28 out of 46 registered political parties in the 7 January 2024 polls helped the Sheikh Hasina regime make the election look participatory amid a boycott by the main opposition BNP and other registered parties.
But Hasina was well aware that none of the small parties would be able to field candidates to make the election competitive. She came up with another recipe. Ignoring the Awami League constitution, she allowed her party leaders, who were deprived of party nominations, to contest the polls as independent candidates and to challenge party nominated contenders in many constituencies. Her intention was to make the election participatory and competitive. Her recipe worked partially.
Independent candidates won 62 seats, several times higher than the Jatiya Party that had been playing the role of main opposition in parliament since the 2014 one-sided election. The independents emerged as the second-highest contenders in 154 seats.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
This marked a historic high for independents securing the second position, setting a new record in the electoral landscape.
The small parties that were allured by the Hasina regime with alleged financial benefits and assurance of helping them to contest the polls performed poorly due to lukewarm support among voters.
The chiefs or chairpersons of a total of 11 political parties lost their security deposits, as they failed to secure 12.5% of the total votes polled in their respective constituencies. Together, they bagged a meagre 44,905 votes.
All candidates from 23 parties lost the polls from various constituencies. Of these 23 parties, the chiefs of nine parties did not run in the polls, and the chiefs of the remaining 14 parties lost the polls, with 11 of them losing their security deposits.
After Hasina's ouster in an unprecedented uprising last July, the parties that contested the last parliamentary polls fell from grace. The AL has been banned. Others have been left out of the entire process of consultation with parties by the current interim government and its commissions formed to draft massive reform proposals.
But the national consensus building commission formed by the interim government to forge consensus on reform agendas did not face a dearth of parties.
The commission, led by its vice-chair Ali Riaz, held marathon talks for the last two months with 33 political parties to discuss reform proposals on constitution, judiciary, administration, police and anti-corruption.
Again, participation of around three dozen parties in the talks seem to have made the process participatory in absence of banned AL and its allies Jatiya Party and 28 others. Following the ban on the AL by the government, the Election Commission suspended its registration, disqualifying it from joining the next election. The other 29 parties that were left out of consultation for reforms still remain registered with the EC. Whether they can contest the next polls or not still hangs in the balance.
Of the 33 political parties, 20 are qualified to contest the parliamentary election as they are registered with the Election Commission — a criterion to participate in the national polls. The remaining 13 parties are not registered. Many of them have applied to the EC for registration.
Considering the past elections' performance, only BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami are considered as major political parties. The newly formed National Citizens Party that has applied to the EC for registration is now in discussion as it was formed by a group of student leaders of the July uprising. Other parties that joined the talks with the national consensus building commission do not have the strength to have any impact on the battle of ballots.
In the previous four elections held since 1991 under the non-partisan caretaker governments and widely recognised as free and fair, the AL and its archrival BNP each won two of them. BNP won in 1991 and 2001 while the AL won in 1996 and 2008.
No other political party came close to the election performance of either AL or BNP in terms of number of votes and seats.
Jatiya Party and Jamaat-e-Islami could never emerge as a potential threat to either AL or BNP. Jatiya Party stood third while Jamaat was always fourth.
After the fall of the autocratic rule of Ershad in 1990, Jatiya Party enjoyed the taste of power thanks to the AL, while Jamaat, in 2001, formed an alliance with the BNP.
In the absence of banned AL and its allies Jatiya Party and others, BNP has emerged as the largest party while Jamaat-e-Islami appears to be the main rival of BNP in electoral politics.
But as politics is also a game of numbers, the small parties appear to be important. As they joined the first round talks with the national consensus building commission, they are expected to join the second round of talks as well.
It was noticed in the past when there was any political crisis centering the national elections, the small parties emerged as useful and important for the regimes.
