Bangladesh needs a political alternative

illiterate.
About 90 million people do not have
access to health care.
About 60 million people have no access to safe water.
About 30 million people are practically unemployed.
About 110 million people do not have
access to electricity.
About 130 million people have no
access to piped natural gas.

Bangladesh needs a political alternative. A new movement, a new party, and a new government to do what no other government has done: do more for Bangladeshis than just take their votes at an election. Bangladesh badly needs a political alternative, a new government that will unleash the energy and power of its 140 million men, women and children.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

Today, even after 33 years of independence a country with a wealth of human and natural resources has failed to move forward. We have failed to honour all those who fought and died for our freedom by not building a country they would be proud to call their home. Today, many of the brightest Bangladeshis are leaving the country, not just for higher education, but even to live permanently abroad.

Crime, disease, corruption -- every citizen knows the problems we are facing. What they are looking for are answers. And for thirty three years successive governments, both military and elected, have failed to deliver real development, real democracy, a real vision for our country at the heart of an Asia that is leaving us behind.

Bangladesh's politicians have failed to provide the answers.

Why?
Because they have failed to listen to the people; they have failed to live up to the trust that has been placed in them.

Some of them failed because they went into politics to advance their own interests, to line their own pockets. They succeeded in making themselves rich, but they failed their country.

But others, including our current Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, entered politics to live up to the highest aspirations of the best leaders from our past.

But they have become trapped by political parties that have decayed to become nothing more than vehicles for unscrupulous members who exploit the public service of many party activists by using their party positions to extort and terrorize the public in pursuit of personal gain. The political parties lead village against village, Bengali against Bengali, all for their own benefit. Political leaders are getting richer while the businessman in Dhaka, the farmer in Thakurgaon, the fisherman in Barisal -- 99 per cent of Bangladeshis work harder and harder to get less and less.

The leaders of our parties could not change this situation even if they wanted to, because the terrorists within the parties have too much power and influence. Party leaders are afraid of the instability that would be unleashed on the country if they seriously challenged the mastaans and the mastaans' protectors, men who now sit at the highest tier of power.

Reforming the existing political parties is not an option: to achieve a position of influence requires too many ethical sacrifices, accepting too many things that need to be rejected if Bangladesh is to move forward. And for too many citizens, those without access to money or political connections or party mastaans, there is no way to get involved in politics. The parties made it clear in the 2001 election that candidates were selected not because they were good people, not because they had ideas to help the country, not even because they had proved their loyalty by serving their party for many years -- they were selected because they had money.

That's not what democracy is supposed to be about. Giving power to criminals with money is not why we fought against the British Empire, why we fought the War of Liberation, why we marched to end single party rule in 1991. We fought, and many died, so Bangladesh could be a country where everyone has the chance to get ahead in life, to take the unique aspects of our national character and develop them in new and positive directions.

Instead we hear, from the people elected to represent us, that "Bangladeshis cannot govern themselves", that despite other countries that emerged from dictatorships much more recently than us, "Bangladeshis are not ready for democracy." These leaders have no confidence in us, why do we continue to have confidence in them?

Tens of millions of people, with hundred of millions of ideas; all that potential energy and creativity, all of it going unused because our leaders have been too busy trying to control their parties' lawless activists.

Bangladesh needs answers, and we need them now: things are only going to get worse. The answer is not to look to the rest of world. We need a solution to our problems that's made in Bangladesh, by Bangladeshis. We will learn from others, but we will follow our own path.

And our own path must be on a map drawn by the people of this country, who must for the first time be asked what they want, not told what they need. This new party will do just that; we will ask for the confidence of the people to join and be part of a movement that transforms the country. Reach out to millions of Bangladeshis, living in the plains and in the hills -- Tetulia to Teknaf -- to unite them for social and economic development.

The people are eager to see an honest government that works. We will have to replace the current system with an alternative, which believes in being fair and decent. The vision is for a more prosperous country where we become wealthier, and where even our poorest neighbours have the opportunity to get ahead in the world.

We know we have to rekindle the spirit of 1947, 1971, and 1991. We have proved three times that we can fight for our freedom; the time is now upon us, once again, to show that using peaceful means, through the ballot box, we can finally transform our Sonar Bangla into a land of opportunity for all our sons and daughters.

Feroz M. Hassan is one of the founder members of Bikolpo Dhara Bangladesh. He earlier started Notundhara -- a social movement for change.