THERE are a good number of reasons why the Representation of People Ordinance can turn out to be a good thing after all. And that is a point the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies would do well to take note of. No, we are not suggesting that everything that has come within the ambit of the RPO promises the moon for us. It does not.
For instance, you cannot really decree that a political party not have front organisations, or that students and workers cannot align themselves with a political party of their choosing. There are places across the globe where parties do have front organisations, and certainly much good has come of the exercise.
There is something else an individual truly holding faith in democracy will not be able to agree to. And that is the provision that an individual can concurrently be a candidate for parliament from three constituencies.
Of course, given that earlier a man or a woman could be a candidate in five constituencies, three is quite an improvement. But it is not enough, if you really believe that the electorate should be in a position to have its opinion expressed and, more importantly, respected.
A big chunk of that respect goes missing when an individual is permitted by the law to take part in parliamentary elections from a multiplicity of constituencies. Why must a single individual, assuming that we all subscribe to the principles of democracy, be a candidate in three places?
You do not see such a state of circumstance in the genuine, substantive democracies of the world. And you do not because of the belief that an individual can only represent, or seek to represent, a single electoral region.
If he wins the election, nothing could be more wonderful. And if he does not, well, he simply concedes and hopes that at a future election those same voters will give him a fresh new chance in parliamentary politics.
The point here is that a candidate either wins or loses. If he loses, perhaps the country will miss his presence in Parliament. But the bigger point is that if the electorate does not want him, he will have no choice but to stay out.
The bottom line here then is patent: let Bangladesh's political system graduate to a level where it does not any more ensure that a politician get into the legislature some way or the other, that he simply must not find himself in a situation where he is no more a lawmaker. Let the system develop in a way that may even have the president or chairperson of a party lose her or his seat, and so stay out of office or a legislative seat until such time as she or he can make a comeback.
There is one other provision in the RPO that makes little sense. It is that small matter of a no-vote. Now, observe the reality as the particular provision envisages it. If fifty percent of voters cast "no" votes, meaning they do not support any candidate in a constituency, the election to that constituency will be deemed invalid.
That is all very fine, but what makes the Election Commission assume that there will be constituencies where fifty percent of the voters will trek to the polling booths simply to register their disapproval of the candidates?
More pointedly, if voters are unwilling to support any candidate, indeed if they are indifferent to the entire electoral process itself, they will stay home. You simply cannot expect citizens to go down to the polling stations merely to say they are not voting for any one of the candidates. Besides -- and here is something to focus on -- does anyone in this country realistically expect circumstances where half the voting electorate will nullify an election through a no-vote?
Let all that be. Proceed now to the better, more qualitative aspects of the RPO. You cannot really take issue with the move to have overseas units of the nation's political parties disbanded. A nation's politics must per se remain confined to the territorial parameters of the country.
But when units of the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, besides those of others, wage local Bengali political battles in distant London, New York and Washington, the result is a deeply divided Bengali community.
These Bengalis are citizens of their adopted countries and yet are not averse to engaging in the bitterness that is so much a political reality back home. Additionally, a transplant of local politics on to foreign land effectively prevents the growth of a cultured, sophisticated class of Bengalis abroad.
It is a ghetto that takes shape, a sight that belies the political and cultural heritage of Bangladesh. Let there be no mistake about it: the sooner these overseas outfits of national political organisations are legally ruled out of existence, the better off we will all be as a society before the international community.
A charming bit of the RPO comes in the stipulation relating to retired civil and defence professionals wishing to carve a niche for themselves in politics. That these novice politicians must wait three years before they can contest elections certainly is reassuring, for voters as well as party leaders and workers.
For far longer than we can imagine, newly retired military officers and freshly superannuated bureaucrats have made a quick entry into politics through displacing party veterans and swiftly taking up their new positions as members of parliament, sometimes as ministers.
That has not gone down well with the country, owing to the very well-placed notion that such an infiltration of politics by individuals who have already enjoyed power and its perquisites through being part of the administrative machinery are, again, in a position to displace all the political men and women who have for ages suffered -- through imprisonment, marches on the streets, police action -- in the interest of democracy.
Of course, every individual has a right to be part of politics, indeed to reinvent himself as a politician. But let him not think of politics as an easy route back to social influence. Let him come up through a plain, proper political process. Let no retired ambassador join a party in the expectation that when the party goes to power he can go back to his old department, this time as minister for foreign affairs.
Elitism cannot be part of politics. But when you permit retired soldiers and civil servants to take the short leap from being servants of the republic to being its lawmakers, you encourage precisely that elitism.
The RPO may not be a perfect document, but it surely is a good beginning. Its emphases on women being part of the political party structure, the necessity of political party registration, and the finalisation of nominations on the recommendations of local party units are steps that promise to underscore democracy.
These are all ideas that should have been brought in and implemented by the political parties in all these years that have gone by. Had they upheld the principles of democracy, we would not be in the bind we are in today.
The cult of personality, the rise of sycophancy, the ascendancy of corruption and the growth of mediocrity would all be strange tales we would have heard in huge disbelief. They would not be part of the real world we inhabit today.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star. He can be reached at: [email protected].