The council of Dhaka city unit of ruling Awami League (AL) was held on December 27, 2012. Its main objective was to elect new leadership for the AL. The city council was held nine years after the previous one on June 18, 2003. And it was held hurriedly only on seven days' notice. But the council had completed all formalities, leaving the main task of electing new leaders for the party's supreme leader Sheikh Hasina. Till date, the committee for the Dhaka city unit of AL is yet to be formed. Nobody in the party knows when the new leaders will be picked to form the new committee. The unusual delay has raised questions in the party about the justification of holding the council. A city unit committee can operate for three years as per the AL constitution. Hence, the committee which will be formed has already passed half of its life span without formation. If the committee is now formed it will have only one and a half years to serve.

Mirza Abbas

The story does not end here. After January 5 parliamentary election this year, conferences of 41 thana units out of 49 Dhaka city units were held after more than a decade. Party men of respective thanas had joined the council session amid high hopes of getting new leadership. But there was no election to pick new leadership. This time too, Sheikh Hasina, chief of the AL, was given the authority to announce the new committees.
In the last two councils held in 2009 and 2012, councilors elected Hasina as the president and empowered her to pick all other office bearers for the party, which she has done on both occasions. But when it comes to Dhaka city unit committees, she has been taking time to exercise her power. She must be very busy with the state affairs and finds little time to spend for the Dhaka city and thana unit committees.  
The BNP recently formed its Dhaka city convening committee-led by Mirza Abbas to boost up the party for waging street agitation against the AL-led government. It was asked to complete their task of forming the local unit committees in the capital in a short time. The main objective for reorganising the city BNP is to gear up street agitation after the coming Eid. The BNP high command has understood very well that they won't be able to mount pressure on the government to begin talks with the opposition for an early parliamentary election until the opposition alliance can destablise the situation in the capital. This is the historic truth. No regime has been ousted until the capital city was made uncontrollable.  
The BNP wants to give the government a tough time in the coming days. Yet there is a certain degree of uncertainty whether the BNP's move will yield the desired outcome. The BNP chairperson had tried to make every quarter happy by giving them representation in the convening committee. Time will say whether this strategy will contribute to minimise intra-party grouping in the city unit of BNP. Sadek Hossain Khoka who was replaced by Mirza Abbas in the new convening committee still remains a crucial factor in city politics.
Now, Mirza Abbas, also a national standing committee member of BNP, will have to prove his mettle. AL general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam commented that nothing will happen even if the BNP's city convening committee is formed a 100 times. His remarks that many BNP leaders will leave the capital if they are offered a post in the city convening committee are true to some extent.  
One thing is however clear that both AL and BNP are not sincere in the democratic practices within the parties. Allowing un-elected people to run the two Dhaka city corporations in the capital for more than two and a half years has also been a manifestation of the current political culture in which democracy exists only in name, not in practice.

The writer is Senior Reporter, The Daily Star.