Of an unholy race

Born in the fifth parliament, the culture of House boycott has struck its roots deep into the country's parliamentary system over the last two decades.
The percentage of boycott by opposition lawmakers now stands at over 85 percent from about 34 percent two decades ago, according to the parliament secretariat.
The record depicts a dangerous competition between archrivals Awami League and BNP to force their MPs into boycotting parliament proceedings while in opposition.
Alarming yet, attendance of Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia in the House sittings as opposition leader has increasingly been falling.
Therefore, their role in leading the opposition bench as a shadow cabinet in the parliamentary democracy, restored in 1991, remains in question.
Khaleda, who as the leader of opposition in parliament gets salaries and status of a cabinet minister, joined only eight sittings in the last four and a half years of the current ninth parliament.
When she was opposition leader in the seventh parliament (1996-2001), she attended only 28 sittings, according to the JS secretariat.
Hasina, as opposition leader, joined 135 sittings of the fifth parliament (1991-1995) and 45 sittings of the eighth parliament (2001-2006).
Like their top leaders, MPs of the two main parties upheld the practice.
In the seventh parliament, for example, opposition BNP MPs boycotted over 42 percent of the sittings. On the other hand, AL MPs while in the opposition bench in the fifth parliament boycotted around 34 percent sittings.
In the eighth parliament, opposition AL lawmakers boycotted 60 percent of the sittings and in the current parliament opposition BNP MPs have already taken the figure to over 85 percent.
According to Prof Nizam Uddin Ahmed, a teacher of Chittagong University and a parliamentary affairs expert, the politics of eliminating each other has given birth to the House boycott culture.
"Ahead of elections, they [parties] promise to join parliament. But when they lose, they refrain from joining the House," he told The Daily Star.
He cited a High Court verdict against this culture, and said the verdict should be implemented in order for leaving such practice behind.
The HC in its verdict on December 11, 1994, strongly denounced the continuous parliament boycott by the then opposition parties -- AL, Jatiya Party and Jamaat.
The HC also declared the House boycott illegal and unconstitutional, and asked the then opposition MPs to return to parliament.
But the then opposition MPs refrained from joining the House, paying no heed to the verdict. They rather resigned en masse from parliament on December 28, 1994, to take their agitation to the peak to realise their demands.
The verdict triggered massive outcry and was subsequently stayed by the Appellate Division.
"The verdict certainly would reflect the popular sentiment of the voters who disapprove the continuous boycott of parliament by the MPs," eminent jurist Shahdeen Malik told this paper yesterday.