That an Awami League leader in Natore abducted a rival candidate obviously to bring upazila election results to his favour and an MP in Noakhali threatened to halt development projects if his son was not elected upazila chairman is an ominous indication for the upcoming upazila elections. And given the sporadic clashes among supporters of rival candidates on innumerable occasions, one may find it reasonable to believe that the mental makeup of the above type is not an isolated trend; it is very much common among political leaders and influential groups at grassroots levels. This sad reality is also substantiated by the fact that AL had to issue instructions asking its ministers and lawmakers to refrain from fielding their sons and daughters, family members or close relatives in the upazila elections and influencing polls outcomes.

Moreover, the ruling party had even to warn that if anyone fails to comply with the party directives, strict organisational measures including expulsion from the party would be taken against them. This only shows the graveness of the situation. Election rigging and manipulating election results by powerful quarters is an old story, particularly at the local level. For reasons experts can explain better, such an anti-election and anti-democracy culture has become stronger, rather than becoming weaker. The underlying reason behind the strengthening of such a culture is that democratic electoral process is just a legal and constitutional provision to sections of politicians, and not a matter of belief, culture and habit to them. This again can be attributed to a lack of healthy democratic practices over many years in the country.
Elections are held to let people choose their representatives to run the state affairs from local level to the centre. But the core objective of muscle flexing culture is to establish supremacy in one's own locality. And the influential persons are trying to use local administration and members of law enforcement agencies for the purpose. If strict measures are not taken right now, the upazila polls are likely to be marred by widespread violence among rivals candidates and their supporters. Such undesirable turn of the elections would put country's electoral process to question and would send to global community a bad impression about our democratic practices.