What does the BNP know that we don't?

But why was so much at stake over a single by-election when the ruling alliance already holds such a commanding majority in parliament? What difference could it make to the effective functioning of the government whether Falu was elected or the BDB candidate Major Mannan?

Let's back up a little to March, when Mahi Chowdhury and Major Mannan resigned from the BNP to join up with ex-President Badruddoza Chowdhury.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

The three immediately came under massive and sustained attack, both rhetorical as well as physical. Perhaps the intense harassment and abuse that the three have suffered since they quit the BNP should be read as the sincerest of compliments.

If the BNP thought that the three represented no real threat, then they could have left them to their own devices. Politicians leave parties all the time. Some strike out on their own. Most sink without a trace.

But the BNP has not been content -- apparently -- to run that risk with the BDB.

From the very start, the three leaders of the BDB have had to face the most appalling intimidation and harassment.

Permission to hold public meetings and rallies has been routinely denied, and when permission has been given, the rallies have been attacked and broken up by ruling party supporters and activists, with the police doing nothing to protect a man who had once been this nation's President, or his supporters.

On one notable occasion, the ex-President was forced to flee for his life along a railway line to get away from an unruly mob that had attacked a BDB rally in Dhaka. Once again, the police did nothing to call a halt to the violence.

Once he quit the BNP and the parliament to throw in his lot with Badruddoza, the fury of the ruling alliance was turned on Major Mannan with full force. Bombs were thrown at his place of residence and his businesses were attacked and vandalised by ruling party activists. The government also (purely coincidentally I am sure) decided that the time was right for an audit of his business interests and froze his bank accounts for good measure.

Moving forward to last month's by-election in the Munshiganj-1 constituency which was vacated when Mahi resigned his seat in parliament upon resigning his membership in the BNP, as per the rules. Mahi returned to parliament in convincing fashion, but no thanks to the ruling alliance which made strenuous efforts, observed and catalogued by the media and election monitoring watchdog organisations, to rig the election in its favour.

The disappointed ruling party activists had to content themselves with attacking Mahi's victory procession, killing one of his supporters.

The recently concluded by-election in the Dhaka-10 constituency was a farce from beginning to end.

The first indication that the ruling alliance were pulling out all the stops to ensure the victory of their candidate was when Major Mannan had to appeal all the way to the High Court merely to be awarded the election symbol of his party. That the government would stoop to such petty harassment of an opposing candidate was truly unprecedented and a good indication of the lengths the ruling alliance were willing to go to in order to win the seat.

This was in addition to a more or less non-stop blitz of campaigning that plastered the walls of the constituency with images of Falu's smiling face and countless meetings and rallies in his support. The importance given by the ruling alliance to his election was clear to all.

Meanwhile, fighting every step of the way, Mannan had to go again to the High Court to stay the election until the fracas over his election symbol had been resolved, and once again to receive an order for army personnel to be deployed on election day to ensure that the election was above board.

As it turned out, in contravention of the High Court order, the army was not deployed on election day inside the 103 polling centres, which were quickly overrun by BNP polling agents who expelled the BDB polling agents wherever present and proceeded to rig the election in favour of their candidate with more or less total impunity.

The rigging was carried on in full view of the independent watchdog organisations that were monitoring the by-election and the media, both of whom were able to catalogue and report on the irregularities in some detail.

From the very beginning it was clear that the fix was in. Thousands of fake voters were bused in from surrounding localities to vote for the ruling alliance candidate, ballots were stuffed, and thousands of genuine voters went to vote only to discover that someone else had already cast their votes for them. The extent of the farce was so apparent that Mannan had little option but to withdraw from the election in disgust within a few hours of the polls opening.

The four principal watchdogs -- non-partisan and neutral organisations with no political affiliation or axe to grind -- released a joint statement shortly after the election demanding that the by-election be cancelled due to the massive irregularities which were so widespread that they were able to itemise them in considerable and convincing detail.

The EC, while conceding that there had been irregularities, astonishingly made the claim that these irregularities were not sufficiently egregious to warrant cancellation of the election. It makes one wonder what exactly would constitute grounds for cancellation. Mannan has once again been forced to seek relief from the High Court.

The question that immediately comes to my mind is why the BNP would go to all this trouble for a single seat in the 300-seat legislature that they already dominate with a commanding majority?

It is understandable that the party leadership is keen to bring Falu, who is one of the most prominent non-parliamentarians in the party, into the parliamentary fold, and there are whispers that he has been slated for a ministerial berth.

But that does not tell the whole story.

The BNP's actions seem to me to be the actions of a party that fears that it is losing its grip on power. Nothing else can satisfactorily explain this counter-productive descent into thuggery. A government that is confident in its mandate and popularity does not need to stoop to these means in order to retain its grip on power or its hold on the affections of the electorate.

It's clear to me that the four-party alliance government is feeling vulnerable and that is why it has resorted to such heavy-handed means. In a word, the BNP is running scared.

There have been whispers that a significant portion of the BNP parliamentary party is unhappy with the direction the party has taken. Further defections from the ranks of the membership would indeed constitute a crisis for the party.

The message for these would-be rebels is clear. Cross the BNP at your own risk. This is why the BNP has gone to such extreme lengths to harass and intimidate the BDB -- to signal that this is the fate awaiting anyone else who is tempted to throw in his lot with Badruddoza. If Mannan had defeated Falu, this might have emboldened some of the less timid of the rebels into defection. That's why it was so important for Mannan to lose. That's why the BNP staked everything on the Dhaka-10 by-election and could not afford for their candidate to be defeated.

Are the whispers of impending defection true? I cannot say. But it certainly seems as though the BNP is taking them seriously.

Maybe they know something we don't.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.