Politics in Bangladesh

Those who claim the constitutional mandate to speak for the masses do not have a voice, and those who have the voice do not have the mandate in Bangladesh. The governing process gets reduced to attending to the anxieties, fears, demands, and aspirations of the upper slice of the society, while the denials and deprivations of the majority go unspoken and unreported, all in the name of keeping at bay that undesirable plague called populism.
The major political parties have lost their voice on two counts. First, political success or failure has come to be defined in terms of winning or losing in the election or by-election. And, as things stands, there will always be some local government or parliament elections or by - elections throughout the year, leading to an excessive preoccupation with that next electoral battle, resulting in postponement of hard decisions both within the government and the party.
Given the additional burden of coalition arrangements, in which every ally and every supporting party has a functional veto, there is a built-in accent on muting the voice, on finding the middle ground, and on diluting policy objectives. The advantage in this lies with those who have the resources to defend their vested interests, because political parties and leaders are forever afraid of offending someone or the other.
The second reason why the political parties are losing their voice is because most of them have become leader-centric. The leadership-centric structures encourage a personality cult leaving the party functionaries and cadres with little choice in the matter of a collective agenda.
In itself, it would have been an organizational asset, but this leader-knows-best impulse, in turn, somehow tends to make the leader a timid commander. Because the very idea of challenging or questioning the leader is discouraged, the leader, in turn, feels the need to propitiate everyone, all in the name of carrying everyone along.
Unless the political leaders find the willingness and the imagination to reclaim their traditional role as moulders of collective ideals and aspirations, the polity will gradually be taken over by anti-democratic voices and forces.