Treading water

Some years are transitional and some are transforma-tional. I would like to argue that while 2007 falls into the former category that 2008 will fall into the latter one. But what does it mean to be a transitional year -- especially a year in which so much has transpired in Bangladesh. Especially for those who have suffered losses during the course of the year -- and there is no shortage of such unfortunates -- nothing is transitional, everything is transformational.
What I mean to say when I suggest that the year 2007 has in many ways been a year of transition is that it is not really possible to look at the events of the year in isolation in any meaningful way. It will only be at the end of 2008 that many of the stories that started rolling this year will have played themselves out to any kind of resolution, and that, looking back, we will have a full and final picture of what this year has signified.
Thus, it is only if and when elections are held (or not held) that we can conclude, with the benefit of hindsight, whether this year in the end turned out to be a good one or a bad one, whether the benefits outweighed the costs, whether what we gained outweighed what we lost, whether the various prices we had to pay along the way were worth it or not, whether the year was a milestone towards a brighter future or a way station on the road back to darker days.
Many have made up their minds already, one way or the other. Many, confident in the bounty of the future, have decided that 2007 is an epochal year for Bangladesh, and that despite slip ups and wrong turns, that the nation is moving fundamentally in the right direction, and that we will emerge from the current emergency stronger than ever before.
On the other side, many have also already made up their minds that little or no good will eventually come of the extended non-democratic interregnum that has been the most salient feature of the year in Bangladesh. They point to the missteps of the interim government, not as an acceptable cost of the transition, but as an inevitable function of a non-democratic and non-transparent administration, and confidently predict that things can only deteriorate in the coming year.
But, I would argue that either assumption is still premature, that 2007 remains, for the most part, an unfinished story, and the resolution or conclusion, to the extent that there are ever resolutions or conclusions in the ever-unfolding drama of the planet and human life, are likely to come in 2008.
It is true that history never ends and that no matter what transpires in the coming year, that new crises will open up and new issues will need resolution, and that nothing is ever, really resolved or concluded. This is a simple truism.
Nevertheless, some years are more epochal than others: 1905, 1947, 1971, 1975, 1991 -- and in this line, I think, when the dust has settled, that we will find that 2007 was a more transitional year, but that 2008 will be a transformational one.
This time last year I wrote a piece entitled "The Fourth Republic, 1991-2006, R.I.P." in which I suggested that Bangladesh's political history could essentially be divided into four discrete republics: 1971-1975, 1975-1982, 1982-1991, and 1991 to the present, and that the latest of these four phases was perhaps coming to a close.
This prediction came true within a week of the piece's publication, but while there is no doubt that 1/11 signaled the end of the Fourth Republic, it still remains unclear what form the Fifth Republic will take, and when we can chart its beginning from.
This time last year, we were coming up on a general election, but the only thing that was certain was that we had run out of good options. Few held out much hope that the elections originally scheduled for January 22 would be anything but fraudulent, but even fewer could predict what the outcome of such a fraud would be, and who would have the upper hand once the dust had settled.
Nevertheless, I do not think that anyone could have guessed that in a year's time that we would be where we are today. It is true that the more prescient of our political commentators suggested that there might be some kind of intervention by the armed forces, but I do not think that anyone predicted this kind of extended state of limbo that we now find ourselves in as a nation.
The more optimistic of our prognosticators were confidently predicting that the intervention would be conducted with clinical (dare one say military) precision, and that by this time we would be looking at a new parliament and government of enlightened democrats.
The more dour suggested the exact opposite: that the events of 1/11 were nothing more than a military coup in disguise and that it would not be long before the powers behind the throne removed their masks and stepped out of the shadows, and that by year's end we would be staring down the barrel of full-fledged martial law.
Neither eventuality has transpired. Right now the nation waits and watches. We have never been here before. Both ex-prime ministers are incarcerated, along with dozens of other senior leaders and thousands of local leaders and grass-roots level workers.
But, specifically with respect to the ex-prime ministers, it remains unclear what is written in their futures. It is by no means a foregone conclusion that the current government can continue to keep them behind bars indefinitely, or that the cases against them will yield guilty verdicts, or, if they do, that this will make even the slightest bit of difference at the popular political level.
Nor, by extension, do we have any idea where the so-called reformation of the political parties they lead will end up. One hopes that these on-going dramas that have dominated the public consciousness over the past year will work their way towards some kind of resolution in the upcoming year, one way or another.
I think that one thing we can safely say is that Bangladesh can ill afford yet another transitional year, and that, for good or ill, these and other issues need to be, and will be, resolved, one way or another, before the end of this year.
There are so many questions that need to be answered, and that, unless I am much mistaken, will be answered, in the coming twelve months. I am not predicting this out of any particular sense of optimism (indeed, resolution could be worse than uncertainty, depending on which way things go), but merely pointing out the obvious: that the current state of affairs is unsustainable beyond a certain time-frame, and that twelve additional months seems to be at the far end of this estimate.
In fact, I expect to see the alliances, bargains, fictions, compromises, and consensuses that have held the current dispensation together for the past twelve months beginning to fray far sooner. The weight of events will force the country towards some kind of resolution. One cannot remain in limbo indefinitely, even if limbo turns out to be preferable to wherever one eventually ends up.
The crucial question is, has been, and will remain, the elections. Elections will need to be held at some point. One hopes next year. But, and again, this is a simple truism, elections will need to be held at some point, eventually. There is no conceivable future for the country that does not include representative elections at some point down the line. This is a point that anyone arguing against elections would do well to remember. At best, you can kick elections further down the line, postpone them, but you can never cancel them.
I would argue that right now the most important thing to bear in mind is that the future is not written yet. Many people having already written the future for Bangladesh in 2008: either glowing encomiums or gloomy obituaries -- but both are off the mark. The truth is that the future is ours to make and the future will be what we make of it, nothing more and nothing less.
Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.