I read in the news that chief advisor of the interim government Professor Muhammad Yunus has said that if the political parties do not want reforms, he will hold the election and step down. He may have said this in a miff or in anger.
My question here is, Professor Yunus is not the owner of this country, nor are the political parties. The people are the owners of this country. Each party has a different aim, objective and agenda. They speak in their political interests.
The toppled Awami League and its allies milked the liberation war to the extreme for their material benefits. That business is now gone and so they are deliberately twisting Dr. Yunus’ words
They voice their demands. There are many political parties in Bangladesh at present. There were 39 political parties registered during the last election. A few more gained registration after 5 August.
Anyway, while all the political parties may not sing in the same tune, there is a degree of similarity among some. BNP is the largest of these parties. A sort vacuum prevails in the political arena. Those who were with Awami League have fled, or have burrowed themselves into holes, gone into hiding. It is still not clear whether Awami League will campaign for the election. There are differences of opinion among the political parties as to whether Awami League will even be able to take part in the election. Certain parties, BNP in particular, want Awami League in the election fray. Why could they possibly be wanting that?
My feeling is that, what will Awami League's dedicated voters do if Awami League doesn't join the election? Will they refrain from voting? If they don't vote, then the majority of the remaining votes will fall into BNP's lot, it is expected.
If Awami League's blind supporters cast their votes, they will certainly not vote for BNP. If they vote for any other party opposed to BNP, then the election equation may turn around. So naturally BNP will want Awami League to contest in the election and that no other party clinches those votes. Perhaps that's the calculation that BNP is making.
If the election is held soon, then BNP stands to gain in the prevailing political vacuum. The later the election is held, the more slippery will it be for BNP. The signs are already visible. Awami League may not be there now, but the misdeeds that it would carry out remain in place. And many of those misdeeds are being carried out by BNP men.
The media reports that many BNP men at the local level are being arrested for extortion, forceful occupation and other misdeeds. Recently a member of BNP’s central committee was arrested on charges of murder. BNP has expelled him. There is no dearth of people to carry out misdeeds in Bangladesh. They do not belong to any one party, but are sheltered and condoned by various parties. Awami League would say infiltrators are responsible for such deeds. They would say this in order to shrug of liability. BNP may do the same. But people do not believe this.
Mugging, extortion and killing continue. This trend will increase. Along with that, BNP’s popularity will begin to gradually wane. BNP fears that the later the election is held, the political arena will grow more adverse for them.
In this country no one is in politics in the interests of the people to place a smile on the face of the people. Everyone has vested interests. They will proceed accordingly
BNP is not directly talking about the election, but wants a roadmap. Roadmap means, fixing a schedule for the election in advance. An election roadmap wasn’t a priority on the interim government’s agenda. There are certain centres of power in the government. One of these comprises the coordinators of the Students against Discrimination Movement. They do not want elections at the moment. They want reforms. Their question is, did not many people lay down their lives, so many people get wounded, just to put one party in the place of another? The state system must be changed first.
At the outset Professor Yunus would also speak strongly about reforms. He had even said, “First we have to recognise what the students have said, that we have pushed the “reset” button. Everything is gone, the past has certainly gone. Now we have to build things anew.” The toppled Awami League misinterpreted this as a denial of the liberation war.
The toppled Awami League and its allies milked the liberation war to the extreme for their material benefits. That business is now gone and so they are deliberately twisting Dr. Yunus’ words. But to me, his words spoke of a complete change in the manner that the state had been run in the past, the manner in which politics has been run. In other, it meant a severance from the pre-5 August trend and building a new order.
What will the benefit be if politics continues in the manner as before? It will simply means a huge movement every few years, an uprising, more lives lost. Then back to square one.
The political parties that are eager for power are prone to say that reforms are not the mandate of this government. This government’s task is to hold the election. My point is, this government doesn’t even have the mandate to hold the election. The government and the political parties must be able to read what the people want. The political parties are failing to read what the people want. They are learning nothing. The political parties are not being able to keep pace with where the people’s aspirations have soared.
BNP is supposed to wait for the election. After all, they could not display the power to topple the government. We can look to two examples here. On the day that BNP’s chairperson Khaleda Zia was arrested in 2018, the police faced no obstruction in taking her to jail. When BNP held a grand rally on 28 October last year, the police and the intelligence agencies dispersed them with tear gas and sound grenades. The gathering at BNP’s rally had been huge.
The political parties are lucky that the students’ movement reached a certain outcome with the support of the people. A sense of fresh air blows across the country now. Everyone can speak out. They must realise that the July-August movement was not under the banner of any political party. Had it been under the banner of a political party, it would never have been successful.
We need to think extensively about the election. The commitment of the political parties will be required regarding the reforms that are being mulled over. The government says that once the reform commissions hand in their reports, these will be discussed with the political parties. The election road map will automatically emerge then. So, why all this hue and cry?
In this country no one is in politics in the interests of the people to place a smile on the face of the people. Everyone has vested interests. They will proceed accordingly. For the past 53 years we have heard that the political parties speak for the people. Actually they speak in the interests of the cronies, their party and their party leader.
Over here, the political parties are the middlemen between the people and the state. I am not using the term ‘middleman’ in a negative or positive sense. This is simply reality. Each and every political party is a syndicate. The bigger the party, the bigger the syndicate.
There needs to be public deliberations on where we want to see the Bangladesh state in five years, in ten years. This state is of 170 million people. We cannot yet again lease out this state to any vested group or political party.
* Mohiuddin Ahmad is a writer and researcher
* This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir