The candidate nominated by the ruling Awami League (AL), Sarfuddin Ahmed Jhantu, suffered a humiliating defeat in the just-concluded Rangpur City Corporation (RCC) elections as he did not maintain good relations with local AL leaders and workers, party insiders said.

They said local AL leaders did not work spontaneously in favour of the officially nominated candidate Ahmed (Jhantu) as most of the designated local leaders had themselves sought tickets from the party high command to contest the RCC polls. The sources attributed the defeat to this reason, adding that the party high command had selected the wrong person as the AL candidate to contest the polls.

Earlier, at least 16 Rangpur district AL leaders had sought nominations from the high command, but, on November 11, the party had picked Jhantu as its mayoral candidate. The decision had been taken at a meeting of the party’s local government election nomination board, with AL president Sheikh Hasina in the chair at Gana Bhaban.

After the meeting, this correspondent had talked to the leaders of the Rangpur unit of the AL and they had all expressed their unhappiness with the decision taken by the party’s top brass.  

They had even claimed that Jhantu did not belong to the ruling party and was an outsider. The decision to nominate Jhantu to contest the local government poll would not prove beneficial for the party, they had warned.

Dubbing the decision to nominate Jhantu as the official AL candidate for the RCC polls as an “unexpected” one, Rangpur

city AL president Shafiur Rahman Shafi had said: “He was engaged in politics with different parties, including the Jatiya Party (JP-Ershad). He is not even involved in active politics with the AL.”

However, such a statement by the local AL leader made it clear that they had not stood behind the party candidate Jhantu to ensure his victory in the local government polls.

Shafi initially declined to comment on the issue over phone yesterday. But at one stage, the local AL leader said there is no reason behind the party candidate’s defeat by such a huge margin.

“It’s very tough to make any comment on the issue. I only would like to say that the person Jhantu was defeated in the Thursday’s polls, not our electoral symbol the ‘boat’,” he added.

“There was no chance of the AL candidate being defeated if the polls were held fairly,” he said.

When contacted over phone yesterday, the defeated AL candidate Jhantu advised this correspondent to ask the people why he had been defeated in the polls. “I will not make any comment on my defeat. Please ask the residents of Rangpur city.”

The organising secretary of the Rangpur district unit of the AL, advocate Anarul Islam, too admitted that there had been a lack of coordination between the party-nominated candidate, Jhantu, and local AL leaders. “The party-backed councillor candidates did not work for Jhantu, which is another reason for his defeat in the polls,” he also admitted.

The party’s central leaders, however, claimed that the AL as a party has won politically in the just-concluded RCC elections.

“Though the AL candidate was defeated in the election, but the AL has won politically in the polls. It is the victory of politics and democracy,” said AL general secretary Obaidul Quader at a post-poll briefing on Thursday at party chief Sheikh Hasina’s Dhanmondi political office in the city.

The Jatiya Party’s mayoral candidate, Mostafizar Rahman Mostafa, bagged 1,60,489 votes from 193 polling centres in Thursday’s local government elections, held under party banners for the first time.

His nearest rival, Ahmed, garnered 62,400 votes, while the BNP contestant Kausar Zaman Babla obtained 35,136 votes.