But the caravan has square wheels!

I have been overcome by an eerie sense of déjà vu stepping in to the month of January 2015. In politics from the beginning of the year there have been repetitive reenactments of events, of actions and reactions of 2014 January. And that made me go over some insightful articles on the country's politics written in 2014 by different commentators and columnists.

And I was drawn by the article entitled “Caravan Must Go On” by an esteemed columnist published in The Daily Star on 12 February, 2014. In the said article while attempting to justify the election of January 5, the author takes a broadside against some of the comments made at a roundtable organised by a think tank in February 2014, on the contrived polls. I relate to the piece a year later simply because his arguments of a year ago are still being flaunted by the ruling coalition as a justification of January 5 election. And it deserves a riposte.

The writer rejected the disputation by a large percentage of the population that the January 5 election was a farce because, according to him, farce is, “when democracy is stifled and yet elections and referendums are contrived in order for a cabal of individuals to perpetuate itself in power.” Any objective reader would find that that particular depiction of farce fits in very nicely with the state of politics today. What we have at present is command democracy without an opposition. Can anyone say with a straight face that the election was not contrived, and was the purpose of it not to perpetuate the power of a particular party? Was the Ershad saga not application of coercion by the government to force compliance from the former military ruler?

While it is true that there is no minimum number of votes to make an election legitimate but no action that is associated with questionable acts can have any claim to validity. If the caretaker system was an albatross, according to the writer, was it not the AL who conceived of it and agitated for the greater part of two years to have the system?

One hears of the need for constitutional and political continuity, all for the sake of upholding democracy. But the democracy we have today does not meet even meet the loosest definition of the term, because nine out of ten voters had nothing to do with the parliament members being there today. And what could one call a situation where the opposition is also represented in the cabinet but a farce? Woe betides a society that has to learn newer and newer definitions of democracy from, of all the people, some TV talk show hosts!

Yes the AL government has done well in many sectors that deserve appreciation, but that is no justification for subverting the process of democracy. There are many who wax eloquent about Ershad's achievements during his nine years in power, but does it justify the political dispensation he chose to rule the country by for the better part of a decade?

We are appalled to see people being served a new fare. The people are being indirectly asked to choose between democracy and development, citing the plethora of development work that has taken place in Bangladesh in 2014, the government preference being 'development' because the AL and its ilk would want us to believe that democracy deters development. Even Malaysia and Singapore are being cited as examples of such a dispensation. These are dangerous portends and smacks of autocracy in the making.

The erudite writer blames the military dictators for putting the knife into the noble ideals of socialism and secularism in the constitution. It is true that the military changed the basic nature of the constitution, but why does one not acknowledge the fact it was a democratically elected parliament that signed its own death warrant by voting into law the 4th Amendment in January 1975.  And it was for democracy that three million of our sons and daughters shed their blood.

The name of the column, 'Ground Reality' was very apt. But I must say that the writer was not in sync with the realities on ground. He tried to prop up his arguments with logic but it is well to remember that to be logical is not to right and ,“There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.”

I am afraid the caravan cannot go on. It, unfortunately, is strutted on square wheels for which it must pause and change them into round ones.   

The writer is Editor, Op-Ed and Defence &Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.