US embassy cable - 05DHAKA2198

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DHAKA 002198 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/09/2010 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, BG, BGD Elections 
SUBJECT: CHITTAGONG MAYORAL ELECTION 
 
REF: 04 DHAKA 2480 
 
Classified By: P/E Counselor D.C. McCullough, reason para 1.4 d. 
 
1. (SBU) Summary. Early reports from Chittagong indicate a 
generally peaceful and orderly election with Awami League 
incumbent Mohiuddin Chowdhury running neck and neck with his 
BNP rival, Civil Aviation State Minister Mohammed Nasiruddin. 
 Several weeks ago, Chowdhury was the clear front-runner, but 
the BNP surged at the end.  If Chowdhury loses, the AL will 
cry fraud and cite it as proof the BNP plans to steal the 
general election expected in early 2007.  If the BNP 
candidate loses, the BDG will cite the election as proof of 
Bangladesh's vibrant democracy.  End Summary 
 
The Incumbent 
------------- 
 
2. (C) Since 1994, ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury has been mayor of 
Chittagong, Bangladesh's commercial capital and second 
biggest city.  Although the mayor's office is nominally 
non-party, Chowdhury is an Awami League Central Executive 
Committee member.  He has a long anti-U.S. track record, and 
his incendiary anti-foreign investment/anti-US rhetoric in 
2001 led the successful opposition to a proposal by a U.S. 
firm, SSA, to build a modern container port in Chittagong 
According to an AL presidium member who supported the 
proposal, Chowdhury and eminent constitutional lawyer Kamal 
Hussain, who represented the opposition in court, acted at 
the behest of the GOI, which allegedly wanted to protect the 
competitiveness of Calcutta's port and "keep Bangladesh 
down."  Chowdhury also played to popular opposition to the 
war in Iraq, exceptionally high in Chittagong because many 
entrepreneurial Chittagonians work in the Middle East, by 
vilifying U.S. actions and raising money last summer for 
suspect Iraqi groups.  After our discreet appeal to AL 
president Hasina, Chowdhury was told to clear with her any 
anti-USG statements (reftel), which effectively ended his USG 
bashing. 
 
3. (C) Populist and charismatic with strong ties to labor and 
other civil groups, Chowdhury was widely seen as the 
front-runner, with some estimates giving him 60 percent of 
the vote. 
 
The Challenger 
-------------- 
 
4. (C) Nasiruddin, a former Chittagong mayor and former 
ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is a strong supporter of the 
BNP's alliance with Jamaat Islami (JI).  Yet, his campaign 
was initially hindered by disinterest from key BNP leaders 
like Tariq Rahman, the PM's son and heir apparent, and PMO 
Parliamentary Affairs Advisor S.Q. Chowdhury, apparently 
because of local political rivalries.  Rahman told us in 
February Nasirudin could not win.  Nasirudin faced other 
handicaps: his formal nomination was late in coming; one 
faction of the IOJ, the extremist member of the ruling 
coalition, initially fielded its own candidate; and 
Nasiruddin is a lackluster campaigner. 
 
5. (C) But in the past two weeks, a flood of senior BNP and 
JI leaders went to Chittagong to support Nasiruddin.  At a 
huge rally on May 7, Tariq Rahman, BNP SYG Mannan Bhuyian, 
and firebrand JI MP Delwar Hussain Sayadee urged Chittagong's 
1.1 million voters to support Nasiruddin.  Tariq invoked the 
blood sacrifices of his family in his appeal for the BNP 
candidates for mayor and ward commissioners.  Prime Minister 
Khaleda Zia, addressing a rally in western Bangladesh, 
charged a particular party with conspiring to derail 
Bangladesh's progress under her administration.  She urged 
Chittagonians to "unite to foil the conspiracy as you did the 
last polls by voting for the BNP-led alliance." 
 
Alleged Manipulations 
--------------------- 
 
6. (SBU) In the weeks preceding the election, the AL charged 
the Rapid Action Battalion and the police were harassing 
their activists and leaders in Chittagong with late night 
raids, detentions, and false charges.  The charges developed 
some credibility when the Election Commission (EC), 
reportedly over the objections of Home State Minister Babar, 
succeeded in getting the BDG to remove Chittagong police 
commissioner Amjad Hussain for inappropriate behavior on 
behalf of the BNP candidate.  AL leaders complained loudly 
that the EC's decision to accredit up to 650 "observers" from 
the National Democratic Foundation, an allegedly pro-BNP NGO 
with no election monitoring experience, would give Nasiruddin 
hundreds of supporters with semi-official status at polling 
areas.  On May 7, Sheikh Hasina charged the ruling coalition 
with seeking to rig the election, and that the Rapid Action 
Battalion was created to eliminate opposition members. 
 
Analysis: The toss-up 
------------ 
 
8. (SBU) The race is too close to call with confidence. 
While AL incumbent Mohiuddin Chowdhury retains, by most 
non-BNP accounts, greater popularity, BNP challenger Mohammed 
Nasiruddin jumped back into the race in the final few days 
thanks to a late surge of campaigning by senior party 
leaders.  The turning point for Nasiruddin may have come at a 
big rally on May 8.  Tariq Zia gave an emotional appeal for 
support, citing the assassination of his father, President 
Zia, in Chittagong in 1981 as proof of his family's blood 
ties to Chittagong.  The election may boil down to the 
impression that PM Khaleda Zia wants to win more than Shiekh 
Hasina.  Zia initially excused PMO Parlimentary Affairs 
Advisor S.Q. Chowdhury from joining every other BNP leader 
from Chittagong from journeying to the port city to rally 
behind Nasiruddin.  Several days ago, however, Chowdhury told 
us, the PM called to say she needed his support despite 
Chowdhury need to recover from his recent heart angioplasty 
operation. 
 
9. (SBU) The Awami League is already crying foul, alleging 
the fix is in.  According to local journalists, Chowdhury has 
already booked the local rally venue for May 11, apparently 
to hold protest rallies.  AL MP Suranjit Sen-Gupta claims 
extravagantly that Chowdhury would win a fair election with 
80 percent of the vote.  With both sides predicting a voter 
turnout of 65-70 percent or about 750,000, it would take a 
lot of ghost voters and ballot box stuffing to make up the 
difference.  But if the margin is narrower, even in the ten 
percent range as one AL leader told us, electoral chicanery 
could give Nasiruddin the victory. 
 
10 (SBU) The minority, mostly Hindu, vote bank is, by all 
accounts, a huge 15-20 percent of the electorate.  Hindus 
typically turn out at 90 percent rates and are generally 
believed to support Chowdhury.  The AL complains, and others 
confirm, that there are not one Hindu presiding officer at 
any of the 577 polling centers, even though the EC drew 
heavily from local teachers, about 40 percent of whom are 
Hindu.  The AL also says the BNP had bussed in thousands of 
out-of-towners to vote fraudulently.  Chowdhury beat 
Nasiruddin in 1994 by about five percent, when JI and 
Ershad's Jatiya Party fielded separate candidates. 
Nasiruddin's backers note that Chittagong city is BNP country 
-- all four MPs are BNP -- and that Nasiruddin should win 
easily as the candidate of the ruling alliance. 
 
11. (SBU) In the end, the bumper sticker version of the 
candidates is that Nasiruddin campaigns on promises to bring 
more resources to the city as a senior figure in the ruling 
party while Chowdhury is popular for not having raised taxes. 
 
 
Polling Day 
----------- 
 
12. (SBU) About 18,000 police, paramilitary, and army 
personnel were deployed throughout Chittagong to provide 
security for the city's 577 polling centers.  Some 2,000 
observers from 14 Bangladesh NGOs monitored the polls. 
 
13. (SBU) The voting was mostly peaceful with only a few 
scattered incidents and irregularities.  With the cell phone 
network shutdown for the day, observers noted that both sides 
appear equally handicapped and unable to direct possible 
disruptions.  Most businesses were closed and there was light 
traffic.  AL party supporters reported that there were three 
cases where AL supporters were misdirected away from their 
voting center and/or harrassed by police.  Polcouns went to 
these polls and was told by on-site AL poll watchers that 
there were no problems or police harrassment.  Polcouns 
observed that in heavily Hindu areas there was no evidence of 
minorities being dissuaded from voting.  BNP supporters 
complained of AL thugs influencing voters but Polcouns found 
no evidence of such influence. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
14. (C) Almost too late, the BNP belatedly recognized that 
the Chittagong race was attracting attention as a warm-up for 
the general election and a referendum on the BNP's and AL's 
respective popularity.  Motivated into action, the PMO has 
now put its prestige on the line.  The last time it did that, 
we got the Dhaka 10 "Festival of Fraud."  At this point it 
seems hard to bet against the BNP candidate, especially if 
the race is close but at poll's close the race is neck and 
neck.  Some observers said that the AL will pull out by 
mid-day but AL MP Sen-Gupta denied this rumor and as of 1600 
local, by all reports, AL has kept its supporters at the 
polls.    Final election results expected around 1100 Tuesday 
local. 
THOMAS