Keep the bull off the glasshouse

Photo: Jonathan Evans

Awami League appears to be caught up in a delusion of grandeur. Call it a lingering spell cast over the party by the three-fourths parliamentary mandate it had ascended to power with. Three years on, much of the ground has slipped from under its feet.
The downward slope of the ruling party has been reflected on its poor showings in three mayoral polls, Habiganj by-election and near trouncing by the BNP in the upazila and union parishad polls.
This found an echo in The Daily Star-designed survey recently conducted by Centre for Strategic Research. The public satisfaction level over the AL government's performance at the end of first 100 days was 62%; after a year it decreased to 53%; at the one-and-a-half-year point it fell to 36%; and now it is down to 33%.
Yet, the AL is unfazed, it puts up a brave face. Rather than reading any warning signal into the electoral defeats, the AL is gleefully passing these off as a justification for holding the national election under party government. They seem to overlook the fact that by-elections and local government polls are held by the party government anyway, whenever these are due.
On the issue of declining popularity the general feeling is that it's the outcome of a deepening economic crisis rather than that of the opposition's agitation and demonstrations.
The opinion surveys clearly reveal an underlying important message, which is that both the ruling party and the opposition have failed to meet popular expectations. But because the government is the dispenser the disenchantment with its performance is naturally quite intense.
The covert and sometimes overt dissensions within the AL; its student wing BCL's unabated criminalities and ham-handed activities of some sections of AL leaders and workers are said to have bred resentment in people towards the ruling party.
Sometime ago, many people felt that with scurrilous remarks of AL leaders including the tongue lashing of the PM at the leader of the opposition (who too is no less acrid in her words), the AL didn't need any political opponent to bring it down in public esteem. The intensity of the diatribe is completely out of step with invitations to dialogue which cannot take place unless an environment conducive to talks is carefully nurtured.
All the prime minister's fire and vituperation are reserved for the opposition, so it seems. To some extent this is understandable given the sometimes tempestuous nature of two-party power politics. But when consequences of a blunder or two committed by the government of the day are misread or underplayed a cycle of irreversible confrontation inevitably sets in.
That shouldn't mean the PM meting out a kid-glove treatment to her party men when manifestly they are bringing the ruling party to harm and corroding the very authority of the government and the state.
Did the prime minister ever sternly admonish the Chhatra League leaders after every wave of terrorisation the ruling party student wing has unleashed from time to time? The glory of 64th founding anniversary of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) was tainted by a broad brush of criminalities within the BCL across a large swathe of the country.
A female artiste was taken from Khulna to Satkhira to perform at the celebrative event of the BCL founding anniversary. The function over and as the darkness fell some BCL elements offered her a safe trip home. On the way, she was gang-raped by them.
After the incident, the Satkhira BCL unit was dissolved and the police have been ordered to take stern action against the rapists. Such has been routine responses handed by the government following such deviant incidents, so the scourge remains. As though that was not enough, Zubair, a final year student of English Department, Jahangirnagar University was beaten mercilessly, dumped in a hospital for hours, and then taken to another hospital where he died.
We now expect the prime minister to blare out to the factious degenerate BCL: "Listen, I disown you and refuse to sit down with you when your peers raped an artiste and killed a highly promising student who was at the doorstep of the bigger world."
Recall here the fact that the Awami League's victory in the last general election was scripted by the swing vote represented by the youth. And now it is another specimen of youth which seems set to unmake that victory.
So far as some ministers go their reputation has been an embarrassment to the government; yet it goes on ring-fencing them against unceremonious exit.
Those who once depended on the party chief's favour for an AL ticket to be elected on the boat symbol seem to have had a reversal of role as the government behaves as if it is beholden to them now.

The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star.
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