Democracy in the political parties
Sharmin Rashid, Uttara, Dhaka
With politics going into a state of suspension as a result of the emergency, there are a good number of questions which have arisen about such issues as general elections. However, one of the important issues that has lately arisen is related to the conditions in which the major political parties find themselves today. The fact that the offices of the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist party are under lock and key is the clearest sign yet of politics being in hibernation, indeed of the many changes that need to be made before things can get back to normal.The caretaker administration has given out broad hints of the reforms it expects to come into the working of the political parties. There is the questions of registration. Unfortunately, it has been the two major parties which in the past defied all calls for registering themselves and so have given rise to the fear that democracy as the country wishes it to be may not really be promoted by the parties. That conclusion may be a trifle far-fetched, but it does not really seem so, considering the fact that within the parties--and we can speak here of the AL, the BNP and even the JP--there is hardly any sign of activity which encourages the country into believing that democracy works in their inner councils. There is the record to fall back on. Abdul Jalil was chosen general secretary of the AL by the party president even though there was a clear expectation that an election for the position might throw up Tofail Ahmed or Abdur Razzak. In the BNP it has always been the prerogative of the chairperson to decide. Khaleda Zia's son was inducted into the party and raised to the position of senior joint secretary general and it reflects the undemocratic nature in which party politics has generally worked in the country. Likewise, in the JP, it has generally been Hussein Muhammad Ershad's writ which has run. In other words, an absence of democratic practice in the political parties has by and large stymied a proper working of these organisations. The state pf politics at this point ought to be taken advantage of by the parties. That means between now and the elections, even as the caretaker government clear the decks for the polling that will result once more in elected democratic government for the country, the parties could go for restructuring within. There is always the past to fall back on. From the 1950s to the 1970s,the AL as a party was a truly democratic organisation, the result of which was the important role it had for itself in the nation's history. It is return to that practice that is called for today. Similarly, parties like the BNP, given the battering it has received in these past few months, should be rethinking their inner modes of working. Democratise or perish!
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