The politician's version of a Ponzi scheme

THE question that everybody in this country would like to ask and nobody would like to answer is how long this government is going to stay in power. It's not about taking a position with one crazy-quilt of alliance or another, but this question persists on both sides. The ruling side aspires to endure in power, while the estranged opposition is determined to remove it from there. Never before politics slogged through so much proverbial mud and never before democracy looked so remote in this country. In the past we have had democracies. In the past we have had dictatorships. But this time it's different. A government has broken a few eggs to make an omelet.  
The omelet in question is the half-hearted election of January 5. Just to recap the shortcomings, the main opposition party abstained from this election. Then half the parliament members are oxymoronic because they got elected without an election. The election of the other half has been at best marginal as voter turnout ranged from pathetic to poor.
If you throw in the false votes and other manipulations, this election has been a curious concoction. The political circus of Hussein Muhammad Ershad made the dog and pony show even juicier. But the absurd parliament brings us the punch line because the opposition also sits in the government! As a matter of fact, the opposition is working so closely with the government that one can't tell the difference. For example, the chairman of the opposition is on the payroll of the leader of the parliament!
This country has seen sham elections before. We have had dictators whose rise to power was less than kosher. In that sense, this government's claim to glory is that it has come to power at least through a semblance of an election. Then why are people curious to know how long this government is going to last? And why does it matter how long it does, if it does?
This election has left people with an incomplete gustatory lateralisation. Since 1990 people have lived in the hope that democracy was a phenomenon waiting to happen. It took people a number of years to build the taste for it. The leaders understood it better than the people in the early days of Bangladesh, and it was easier to sell democracy to people because they were already heady with the joy of independence. The transition from subjugation to freedom was sufficiently absorbing for them.
Then people slowly got introduced to the idea of democracy, not in mere words but also in action. The mass uprising of 1990 that toppled a dictator played for the first time the action-packed drama of democracy on the big screen. It was a turning point in our history because people, so long familiar with a political jargon, also learned to appreciate its meaning.
The terrain of democracy has been rugged since then, and every five years the struggle culminated in disputed elections. But this nation was able to pick up where it left off every time, running with the torch of hope that democracy was inevitable once the teething pains were gone. In 2014, people have stumbled in that journey, their optimism shaken to its core.
Also, the table has turned after 42 years. People now have a better understanding of democracy than their leaders. It's a different story that they don't have the power to influence outcomes. In the past when military juntas seized power, they resigned to despair because they thought they had no business in the matter of who ruled the country. The people were more interested in the keeper than the usurper, little concerned that most of the time both were the same entity.
Interestingly, when people ask how long this government is going to last it's not because they're interested in one alliance or another. It's rather because they feel deprived. Not only has a national election eluded them, but it has also robbed democracy in its inner sanctum.
When the dictators subverted democracy in the past, it only strengthened people's resolve to strive harder for it. When democracy faltered between elections in the past, it stoked up their ambition to fix the problems. But this time it's different, different because people have been exposed to a grievous contradiction. The government of the people, by the people and for the people has the spurious taste of a vegetable curry without the vegetables.
The ruling party vows to stay in power for five years and the opposition vows to unseat the government as soon as possible. In this tussle democracy stands farthest from its destination, because it's the politicians' version of a Ponzi scheme. Never before has a miniscule minority, who voted in an election, has so manifestly swindled the significant majority who didn't.  

The writer is, Editor, First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star.
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