BNP to face hurdle to tame rebels

Elections may begin in September, Fakhrul tell JS
UP elections likely first; all tiers to be covered within a year

Local government elections may begin as early as September or October this year, once the monsoon season ends, Local Government Minister Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said Tuesday — but even as the government readies the electoral calendar, the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party is quietly bracing for a challenge it knows well: keeping its own house in order.

Fakhrul, replying to a question in Parliament, said Union Parishad elections are likely to be held first, with other tiers — municipalities, Upazila Parishads, Zila Parishads and city corporations, including all 13 city corporations — to follow in phases over the next year.

No party symbols will be used. That last detail is at the heart of the BNP’s anxiety.

The Rebel Problem
Without party symbols on the ballot, the barrier to independent candidacies drops sharply.

Any aspirant who fails to secure the party’s nod can run without formally defying it — and in a party as large and geographically spread as the BNP, the temptation will be hard to suppress.

“Yes, BNP is a big political party. It has a large number of leaders and workers across the country, so the party will have rebel candidates — it’s normal,” BNP Standing Committee member Abdul Moyeen Khan acknowledged.

“But we will try to ensure single candidates for the upcoming local body elections, and obviously those who go against the party decision will face organisational action.”

The issue is not hypothetical. Rebel candidates were a visible problem during the 13th parliamentary election, and party insiders say it came up explicitly at a closed-door meeting in the last month at the Krishibid Institution auditorium in Dhaka — the party’s first large-scale organisational gathering since the February polls.

Prime Minister and BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman presided, with Standing Committee members, divisional organisers, district and metropolitan committee heads, and central leaders of Jubo Dal, Swechchhasebak Dal and Chhatra Dal all in attendance, alongside 11 ministers and state ministers.

Sources present at the meeting said Tarique Rahman delivered a clear message: local government elections must be neutral and competitive, won through grassroots work rather than administrative leverage.

“Unlike the previous government, he said he had no opportunity to use administrative influence or party privileges to ensure anyone’s victory,” one attendee noted.

Divisional organising and co-organising secretaries have since been assigned specific responsibility to identify and dissuade potential rebel contenders before they file nomination papers, approaching candidates personally to secure compliance with party decisions.

Violence and the Law-and-Order Test
Alongside the rebel candidate problem, BNP leadership is worried about election-related violence.

Multi-cornered contests from the same party in a single constituency breed local rivalry — and in Bangladesh’s local government elections, that rivalry has historically turned physical.

Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed, also present at the 9 May meeting, responded to demands from grassroots leaders with a notably firm warning: law and order would be brought under control at any cost, irrespective of identity or political affiliation.

He acknowledged that enforcement had been lenient in the aftermath of the political movement and repression, but said that phase was over.

“Things would no longer be viewed leniently,” he said, adding that internal divisions within the party must be reduced.

Several BNP leaders privately believe the local polls will also serve as the first major public test of the government’s administrative capacity and grassroots popularity since the national election.

An Opportunity, If Managed
Behind the anxiety lies a strategic calculation. The interim government removed elected representatives installed by the previous Awami League administration across city corporations, pourashavas, upazilas and Union Parishads, replacing them with administrators.

The resulting vacuum has strained service delivery at the lowest tiers of government.

Multiple sources at both the government and BNP policymaking levels confirmed that the prolonged absence of elected local representatives has directly degraded public services.

For the BNP, filling that vacuum through elections also means reactivating party structures that lay dormant during years in opposition.

A letter signed recently by Prime Minister’s Political Adviser and BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, addressed to the top two leaders of district and metropolitan units across the country, instructed them to intensify organisational activities and improve local coordination — a signal that the party intends to treat these elections as a mobilisation exercise, not merely an administrative formality.

Whether the BNP can translate its organisational momentum into disciplined, violence-free campaigns — and keep its own ambitious local leaders from breaking ranks — remains the central question as the election season approaches.