Finally, the clock has turned back

THE gods in Greek mythology condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain only to see it roll back where it lay at the beginning, and to roll it back to the top and see it roll back, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. And what better way to mete out a dreadful punishment than this futile and hopeless labour.
It seems Bangladesh too is condemned to suffer the fate of Sisyphus -- forever seeing a shimmering light at the end of the tunnel only to see it fade away at the end, and to see yet another light only to fade again. For well over three decades, politicians, bureaucrats and the corporate syndicates have been playing with the destiny of Bangladesh only to share the profit and to exploit, to impoverish, to deprive the teeming million for whom the bell of good fortune never tolls.
Indeed, the clock has almost completely turned back to where it was in pre-1/11. Except for the Emergency Rule, everything else is symptomatic of the classic Bangladeshi letdown. It's a letdown for the people of Bangladesh, the vast majority of the ordinary citizen who may never again have the opportunity to free themselves from the yoke of BNP-AL hegemony.
Among intellectuals, political pundits, and even in the corridors of power, there's an aura of a kind of reconciliation or rather a perception of forget-what-we-said-let's-do-the-election. The messianic passion that we saw in the CTG and ACC to rid the society of all corruption has lost its force. The issue of reform in the political parties has been quietly buried under the carpet. All that fury, resentment, and bitterness against the political grafts that were currency only a few months back are now seemingly shrouded in antiquity, as though to say: "Corruption? What corruption?"
As I wrote before, this is a nation which is quick to jump with a cry of condemnation and equally quick to forget it for other profitable leeway. Indeed, come December, we will see one of either BNP or AL in power once again to enact a hegemony that will be even more aggressive and exploitative than ever before.
CTG is now all compliant and all conceding! All talks of grafts and political crimes are conveniently shunted aside to make way for the reconciliations and compromises with the two largest parties -- it's as though all is forgiven, come let's play election! And rest assured, in a couple of months' time, all charges against the begums and their minion acolytes will be withdrawn, so as to make way for the begums and their cohorts to run for office once more.
I feel let down by the CTG -- we trusted you to make a mark, a rare precedence, a paradigm on the history of this wretched nation, a past which is littered with a sum total of flagrant abuse of power and exploitation of a vast poor class by an elite class of wealthy ministers and their corporate cronies. Indeed, it's a shame on us collectively as a nation. It's indubitably a paradigm shift of the classic kind.
These days the advisors of this CTG are concerned more with meeting the demands of the parties. At least when the other begum was given parole the word "parole" was officially mentioned, but now that seems to have lost its connotation. We are not hearing parole, but the word "release" is reverberating. The high-profile criminals who are languishing in jail right now will soon be out on "executive order" just so that both the major parties would agree to run for the election -- it's as though Bangladesh is doomed unless the begums and their cronies take over the helm!
I could see this coming! Things began to go awry when the ACC and the CTG began to get bogged down in a slippery legal battle with their high profile law-suits, a treacherous battle they hadn't seen coming. Let's face it -- it's one thing to condemn a criminal and the crime, but quite another matter to actually prove it!
And inevitably, as always the burden of proof lies with the plaintiff. Failing that, the condemned walks free. And when the state itself is the plaintiff, taking on a garb of evangelical mission to do justice by pledging to convict the arch criminals who have committed the gravest of crimes, well, that's a tall order for a nation as wretched as this!
It is now clear that the ACC and its lawyers have not done sufficient groundwork to build up their cases. As far as the high profile prisoners are concerned, it is feared that the cases against them may not hold water i.e. the loose ends of the cases are staying loose and furthermore their cases are as flimsy as a pantomime show. As a necessary corollary of abuse of power is the manipulation of the law and the judiciary. The previous "democratically elected" governments were no different -- the leaders and theirs cohorts who have so far been indicted on corruption charges, kept their "papers" clean for any future contingency such as what they are facing now.
I was overtly supportive of this CTG when they took over power 19 months ago. Right now, my support for them is waning. However, right now CTG is walking on thin ice -- it is losing support from all walks of life -- it's credibility is at an all time low -- and it's making matters worse than what it is by getting bogged down in a petty partisan debacle by seemingly trying to satisfy their (the two main parties) every demand.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating! And quite naturally, EC needs to be tested on how credible and robust their reforms have been. What better way than to take the recent local election as a test case -- and lo and behold, the biggest proof is the latest show of reluctance from the mayor-elects to relinquish their partisan loyalties and party memberships.
So much talk of the need for a non-partisan local government, a non-political mayor, and now this! It's as though the clock has indeed turned back to where it was 19 months ago. This latest show of resolve by the elects only goes to prove the manifest truth: how entrenched the corruption is in Bangladeshi system, where party affiliation is perceived to be far more important than local or indeed national progress.

So what is looming ahead?
This is the scenario: Third week of December 2008. The emergency has already been fully lifted. People are going about their daily businesses as they have always been, but with a pinch of disillusionment. The old protagonists are back in full swing -- both the begums, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, are running for election -- they have been acquitted or rather exonerated -- all charges have been withdrawn due to lack of "substantial evidence" (official explanation), even though there is considerable circumstantial and documentary evidence. All the other BNP and AL bigwigs are back in business -- it's like the gold rush is in full swing and the pioneers are rushing in.

Dr. S. I. Zaman is a university professor writing from the Middle East.