Election reflections

AND so here we are again -- after all the months of hope and resignation, prevarication and sabre rattling, the elections are finally upon us. Suddenly, it's almost like the last two years never happened.
On the one hand we have one lady who is making vaguely progressive noises and on the other, we have the great defender of Islamic values, who keeps telling us she is essential if the country is not to be sold down the river to our conspiring neighbours. Feelings of deja vu, anyone?
I have no particular political affiliation or allegiance, nor do I harbour pretensions towards any great insights on the murky intricacies of "the way the system operates." My views on most socio-political issues tend to veer slightly left-of-centre.
I basically believe the country should be governed according to the principles of the original 1972 constitution and the people and parties who opposed the idea of the sovereignty of this nation and perpetrated the specific acts of looting, arson, murder and rape against its own people during our struggle for independence have no place in our political process.
I also happen to believe that convicted criminals, tax dodgers, loan defaulters and people who are accused of war crimes have no right no represent this country in its highest offices.
Sounds simple, no? It is not. In this "through the looking glass' country of ours, some of these views come close to being seen as heresy.
Be that as it may, and without going into tedious details on what's been gained and lost since January 11, 2007, let's just look at the choices we, as ordinary voters, are confronted with on December 28, 2008.
In the particular constituency where I happen to live, the choice is between a failed despot who institutionalised the graft and corruption that has eaten away at the country ever since and an apologist for the last political administration who was so avowedly anti-reform that he kept defending his party's tyrannical and lawless ways even as everyone else was jumping ship.
The others on the bill, pragmatically speaking, are non-entities: unless you belong to their immediate families and cannot lie to them in good conscience, you would not vote for them. So what does one do?
"But wait," I hear you say. "Surely there is the other way? If you feel so strongly about it, why don't you just vote your conscience -- just go and vote No?"
Well, I have a few issues with the entire No Vote concept. They rules stipulate that if the number of No Votes add up to more than 50% of the total votes cast in a particular constituency, the results will be considered void and the polling will be re-held.
Now take a step back and consider this. What you are being told is that if the sum total of No Votes is more than that of all the candidates of that constituency put together, by-elections will have to be held. I would be astonished if even one instance of this were to happen across the length and breadth of Bangladesh.
To my mind the more logical thing would have been to call for by-elections if No Votes total more than the total for the highest vote getting candidate -- that would have given the No Vote option some real teeth. Greater minds than ours have arrived at the present solution, however, so who am I to nit-pick.
This being the land of rumours and conspiracy theories, one hears all sorts of blood curdling stories: the country is awash with cash being brought in from one coalition's exiled leader and their overseas mentors to stave off their inevitable defeat, the No Vote option is just a ploy to divert votes from the "progressive" forces, all this pomp and pageantry will just lead to a fiasco of an election and a puppet national government being formed … so on and so forth ad infinitum.
With all this as the background, it's easy to throw up your hands and say, okay, enough -- I just want no part of this anymore. Well for all of us, our conscience will be our guide: you do what you can live with in this life. In my own mind, I may still not be certain what I am going to do, but I do know very clearly what I am not.
I am not going to vote for the people and the parties who are accused of war crimes against our country and its people. I am not going to vote for those who were against the sovereignty of this country to begin with and are still working to undermine it. I am not going to vote for the parties and the people who act as their partners and help to rehabilitate and re-integrate them in the mainstream political process of this country.
I am not going to vote for someone who is the epitome of all that is shameful in our politics: the greed, the corruption, the lack of personal principles. I went to Dhaka University in the late eighties and the early nineties, and our generation spent their youth rebelling against this man, the same person who is now a candidate for the "progressive" coalition. This to me is the ultimate irony, and the ultimate insult.
I am not going to vote for convicted criminals, loan defaulters, and tax dodgers. I will not vote for people who are known hoodlums and bent politicians. I realise this leaves me with scant options, but this is the line in the sand that I am drawing. There is still that No Vote option after all.
If one looks very closely, there are rays of light on the horizon. We have seen some good candidates emerge -- across various parties -- and some long-toothed dinosaurs cast onto the ash-heap of history. We see a younger generation begin to take interest and start on the first steps to integrate themselves into the country's political process.
I agree with some of the points Zafar Sobhan made in his column in The Daily Star recently: Between an unelected government and a bad candidate, people will take the bad candidate, but one should not interpret this to mean that they cannot recognise or appreciate a good candidate if they are given one.
This time of the year always brings to my mind that old John Lennon chestnut Happy Christmas (War is Over). John wrote this at the height of the Vietnam war; over a soaring chorus of angelic children's voices singing: "War is over, if you want it," he brought it all home in that wonderfully pungent voice of his. "So this is Christmas," he sings, before plunging the knife in: "And what have you done?"
Not much, John, not yet. Someday, though, someday …

Tanvir Haider Chaudhury is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.