Clear the path for national consensus

The president of the country Abdul Hamid in his speech in the parliament on Thursday stressed on forming a national consensus for permanent peace and prosperity of the country. This is a timely demand. No country has ever reached its aspired destination without national consensus.

The president has urged all political parties and people from all walks of life to take combined initiative to form such solidarity. This call has utmost significance.

President Hamid, in the 163-page statement, elaborated the government measures and achievements in various sectors including economy, commerce, investment, and food, agriculture, environment, and education, and health. He reminded all of the significance of consensus regarding permanent peace and prosperity.

It’s a parliamentary tradition for the president to give a speech at the beginning of a New Year. It’s not unnatural that the speech includes praises and vindications of the government as it is drafted by the executive section of the state.  The speech has its significance in the fact that it provides an agenda for the ruling and opposition parties to discuss in parliament.  The ruling party members generally welcome the statement while the opponents dissect the disparities.

The president has focused on several national issues that are crucial for the people. He emphasised consolidation of transparency, accountability, tolerance and human rights and rule of law. He identified that the ruling party and the opposition party should side by side play a constructive role for the nation’s progress and prosperity.

The role of the opposition party is significant in democracy. Opposition parties form shadow cabinets in many countries which we still lack in our parliamentary tradition.

The president articulated the same observation regarding transparency, accountability, human rights and rule of law. It means we have not progressed much in these sectors, especially in tolerance. Tolerance is crucial for consolidating democracy. Despite our remarkable economic successes, corruption could not be reined in much. A perturbing scenario of corruption was unveiled through the recent anti-corruption drives by the government. Recovery of 20 million taka from an upazila project implementation officer at Dinajpur’s Parbatipur proves that such drives have failed to aware the concerned quarters’ conscience.

The president expects an effective role of both the ruling and the opposition party to gain peace and prosperity of the country. There is no evidence that peace has been disturbed by the opposition party in the recent times. They are not even allowed on the roads, how could they disrupt peace? Rather, provocative comments like ‘the opposition party has no guts to stage demonstration’ or ‘they could not even grab the road for even three minutes’ made by ruling party leaders are disturbing for peace.

Dissent and staging peaceful demonstrations are prerequisite for democracy. In the democratic parliamentary system, the government is accountable to the parliament. If the government commits any wrong, it is customary that the parliament would seek answers from it. But democracy will not be there if the there is no demarcation among the government, ruling party and the parliament.

The impediments of a national consensus must be eliminated first in order to achieve it. The role of the ruling party is more crucial in this regard.