Bad politics is the bane of this country

We have been misgoverned since day one of our journey as a new nation. While good governance aims at establishing the rule of law, pooling and harnessing of resources for optimum development and growth, cutting waste and corruption, setting national priorities right, bringing about distributive social justice, alleviating poverty, ameliorating the lot of the common run of the people, and more pointedly, catering to and focussing on the needs and aspirations of the people, it is mainly the needs and interests of the rulers and the ruling class of the day which have shaped and guided our national policies so far.

Be it Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Ziaur Rahman, HM Ershad, Begum Khaleda Zia, or Sheikh Hasina Wajed, all have tried in their own way to perpetuate their hold on power, and to that end have allowed, wittingly or otherwise, the rule of law to be circumvented, injustice to prevail over justice, wrong to triumph over right, falsehood to supplant truth, and the interests of a politically linked tiny group of people to push to the background those of the majority people and the nation. This is how nepotism, parochialism, corruption, and aberration have become the order of the day. This is how the ugly phenomenon called the criminalisation of politics or the politicisation of crime has welled up in our body politic.

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A senior bureaucrat in Prime Minister's Office being retired rather ignominiously, and the episode of a senior police officer probing a murder case of a prominent opposition MP having been suddenly withdrawn and then prosecuted for allegedly trying to bribe the Home Minister in the recent past are all tell-tale events which speak louder than words about how the good name and reputation of a fine national institution like the civil administration is being besmirched and its efficacy impaired because of the evil of politicisation. And the less we say about the stage-managing of the recent by-election of Dhaka-10 constituency the better, because it only smacks of the alacrity with which this government and all other previous governments have been pursuing their political agenda of systematically destroying, brick by brick, the edifice of good governance, democratic rights of people, human values, truth, and justice that democracy and the rule of law stand for and our constitution offers to protect.

Thirty-three years have gone by and we have heard a good deal of promises and rhetoric from our political leaders since we became independent from Pakistan, but as a nation we still seem to be foraging around where we started from in 1971 in quest of our political freedom and economic emancipation. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid and assistance received over the years, we are still one of the least developed countries in the world. Our finance minister has to go out every year seeking aid from donor countries to fund our development and poverty alleviation plans and projects. Does it not hurt the national pride of our leaders? No, I suppose it doesn't, because most of our front-ranking national leaders seemingly go about flaunting their new-found wealth, riding in big luxurious cars, living in palatial buildings, owning properties at home and abroad and globe trotting around on business and pleasure trips as the richest people of this poor and hapless country. But it does hurt the pride of the freedom-loving people of this country who cherish the ideals of freedom and human dignity. They bemoan the fact that the overwhelming majority of the people live in abject poverty, and that people do not enjoy fundamental human and democratic rights, not because they do not deserve it, but because their political leaders have failed them.

The vast opportunities that our hard-earned freedom and independence in 1971 laid open to us to develop our potential to full flowering as a democratic, self-reliant, vibrant, forward-looking, liberal country have been misused by our political leaders only to further their narrow political ends. Grabbing state power and making personal fortunes have been the be-all and end-all of our major political parties and their leaders. Our political system in place has only engendered mutual mistrust, animus and hatred among our political parties leading to wide-spread violence and disunity across the whole spectrum of our national life. It has been our political culture that the government and the opposition must be perennially at loggerheads. Neither of them recognises the other as an essential entity and partner in the existing political dispensation. The government is prepared to exhaust all its power and authority to bully the opposition out of the parliament and ride roughshod over it, brutalising, terrorising and harassing the opposition political leaders and workers. The opposition, for its part, does not show even the modicum of respect to the government elected by the people, and vows to pull down the government by any means, fair or foul, and to that end resorts to boycotting the parliament and staging anti-government street agitation like processions, laying siege to important government offices, hartals, etc paralysing normal life and causing loss of life and property.

In this political show-down between the government and the opposition, it is the people who suffer most and the biggest casualty is democracy, the rule of law, development and the people's welfare. No wonder, therefore, that even after 33 years of our independence, we are derided and jeered at as one of the poorest of the poor. And add to it the ignominy of our country being declared the number one corrupt country in the world consecutively for the last three years, thanks to our political leaders either leading the corruption from front or failing to stem the tide. No wonder also that in this age it takes as long as five to six hours for people of some region in this country to traverse a distance of about 150 kilometers by road, while in developed countries it takes no more than an hour or so. Crimes and criminals are so prevalent now across the country that people feel most helpless and insecure for their life, property and honour as never before. Criminalisation of politics and politicisation of administration as the necessary evil of the political system in place has seriously subverted the rule of law creating a recipe suitable for growth of religious extremist groups like the one led by Bangla Bhai, which may ultimately prove to be too formidable to control, given the possible ramifications of covert and overt activities of the politico-religious outfits whose long term objectives are to turn Bangladesh into an Islamic state ruled by clerics on the model of Mullah Omar's government in Afghanistan. Our political norms are so below par that an elected political government is not trustworthy enough to ensure voters democratic rights to vote freely, which is why the novel concept of a non-party caretaker government to conduct general election is in place now. The question that comes up naturally in the mind is: Is it not somewhat paradoxical that a government which cannot be entrusted with the task of conducting free and fair parliamentary elections is mandated to govern the country? Does a government which cannot be trusted to ensure that a citizen can freely exercise his or her right of franchise have the necessary moral authority to inspire confidence among the people that their fundamental human and democratic rights are safe under it?

Clearly the crying need now is for the politicians to do some soul-searching, cast aside their narrow political differences, and work together for reforming the political system in order to allow democracy to guide and shape politics of this country. Politicians must first learn to practice democracy within their political parties before they are called upon to demonstrate democratic behaviour as members of parliament and as leaders. Black money and illegal arms and those who hold them must be banished from the arena of politics. Our politicians must stand on the moral high ground of impeccable personal honesty, integrity, knowledge, vision, and commitment to serve the people and the country. Notorious listed criminals, smugglers, black marketeers, persons accused of murder, rape and arson, bank loan defaulters and such "tainted" people known to be godfathers of terrorist gangs, and people opposed to our independence and war of liberation who collaborated with the occupation force, etc must be disqualified from being a member of parliament. There is no other short-cut to our national recovery.

The writer is a former Military Secretary to the President of Bangladesh.