Return of the natives
FOR our national politics if 2007 was the year of breakdown, 2008 is the year of restoration. The year of breakdown began with the political locomotive rushing to the brink. It was stopped in its tracks by 1/11.
The passengers were disembarked and sent to cool their heels for a more sensible conduct on a newly laid track. Bangladesh saw a wholesale incarceration of its old and new breed of politicians. For good or for bad our politicians along with the dynasties were stigmatised. The country was left to believe that a new dawn of politics would emerge or the chastised politicos would come back with new ethos.
The year of the restoration started with mixed signals. Although this government is basically a rescue team, the unstoppable price hike dented its popular approval to a certain degree. In a way the wind started blowing back to the sails of what looked like irredeemably compromised politicians. Besides, they found an issue about the justifiability of holding local body polls before national polls.
The government was faulted for an assumed tilt towards Sheik Hasina's Awami League. She was allowed to go abroad without much hassle. Then it appeared that the flood-gate has been opened. The detainees started coming out in great number to indicate a restoration.
The chief whip turned acting secretary general of her beleaguered party has done enough penance for his errant son with his faithful espousal of his leader's trademark inflexible stand. The loudmouth of the party, as his detractors know him, has hinted at the last act of the play. The Awami League general secretary has recovered and returned in time.
The octogenarian acting president of the party is in the media spotlight with his critical observation on the modus operandi and intention of the caretaker government. Both the parties have expressed their reservations about fulfilling Election Commission requirements on registration.
Restoration is going full circle. If recent City Corporation and municipal polls are any indication pre-1/11 political trend of the country has been resurrected. There is nothing to lament. What was to happen has happened. Representational politics has returned to the politicians.
Bangladesh has all along been a highly politicised country, although there is not much to choose between the Awami League and BNP. The birth of Bangladesh saw the baptism of Awami League as a left of the centre and secular political party in accordance with the gospel of its patron saint Bangabandhu. Since then it has shifted its stand because of electoral necessity and is today a centrist party that courts divine benediction (Sheikh Hasina's rosary beads and headscarf).
BNP was born in opposition to Awami League. It is slightly right of the centre if one considers its egalitarian marriage with big business. And yes, it is marginally Islamic. There is not much of a choice.
It is the inviolability of inheritance and popular support of the personal image that drive the two parties. No amount of pious intention can make them follow a new course. It is the basic reality of Bangladesh politics. Every election will produce the same result. Even the system of government has been perfected to pay obeisance to the person. Election results only vindicate it. Parliamentary system of government has become prime ministerial form of government.
It is therefore neither practical nor sensible to expect a new breed or a new generation of politicians to emerge from the present stigmatised lot. Apparently the effort is floundering. The rationale behind reform may look justified but this will only rally greater and renewed support around dynastic leadership.
For politics in a setting of Bangladesh's kind is all about staying close to the sun. The sun or the leader spreads favour and fortune. Naturally reforms fail. But there is always a lesson to learn from a trial that visits a nation: That this nation cannot go back to the violent, desperate, intolerant and extremist politics that traumatised the country before 1/11.
Violence is a fellow traveller of dogmatic politics that holds Bangladesh captive. Perhaps the toll of innocent human lives in Udichi and Ramna killing was not enough; the grisly carnage of August 21 took the lives of Ivy Rahman and many others. The following year it took the life Shah A.S.M. Kibria.
The BNP government was abominably lackadaisical about finding out the perpetrators. These are all political killings that cast sinister shadows on national politics. Of all people, the chief of Awami League knows what devastation it can wreak, yet she called her party faithful to march to the capital armed with sticks (lathi) and oars (boitha).
Dhaka saw broad daylight mayhem when five party workers of the opposing camp were bludgeoned to death. Innocent bus passengers were torched alive when a bus was set on fire by the party "brown shirts."
BNP swept into power in October 2001 polls even though the caretaker government chief, the president, and the CEC were not their men. In spite of ithis, they resorted to devious tactics to put men of their choice in posts that mattered for the 2006 polls.
This time Awami League in the opposition responded with fury. Awami League would have perhaps won handily had it understood that BNP as the party in power was much unpopular. As the veteran of many polls, it should have realised that it is not men of choice but winning the hearts and minds of people that wins polls. These are all acts of desperation driven by misplaced faith.
The personal antipathy between our two leaders is so deep-seated that the two parties would not talk to each other. Intolerance runs so deep that the loosing party returns to the streets and the winning party gloats over a deserted parliament. For more than ten years the country had the misfortune of supporting bizarre sessions of ineffectual and empty parliament. Even this restoration may not serve in the long run if the lesson is learnt.
Constitutional process cannot function without politicians. They are the custodians of public trust. Politics is all about honouring the trust to the best of one's ability. In all fairness it can be said our politicians have not been able to prove equal to national expectation.
The tract record is dismal so much so that the constitutional process had to be rescued by 1/11. It is an indictment of our national politics. We believe that our politicians have learned the lesson. It remains to be seen. The restoration is not an acquittal, but an opportunity to redeem their image.
Comments