How can AL win majority seats again?

While meeting with a delegation of Bangladesh Muslim League on January 9, PM Khaleda Zia claimed that "BNP and development are synonymous." She claimed whatever development took place since independence was the work of BNP. When I was reading this, my ear drums started reverberating with former President Ershad's screams: "Lies, lies, and lies."

In fact, Colonel Jafar Imam, a former minister under Presidents Zia and Ershad told me: "Whatever noteworthy development work you are seeing in Bangladesh were either completed or mostly planned during Ershad's presidency." Of course, whoever comes to power certainly does some work. But an outlandish claim that "BNP did it all" is simply a deceptive cheap shot.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

One wonders if the funds spent on development work during Khaleda's current term falls short of the sum total of defaulted loans, black money, and ruling alliance functionaries' illegal takes. How would the country get the highest corruption ranking for five consecutive years if it was otherwise? My estimates are based on the widespread notion that nearly 50 percent of the development funds are gulped down the pockets of ward commissioners, local officials, lawmakers, ministers, and party election coffers.

Hasina has claimed that "not a single kilowatt of additional electricity was generated over the last four years." New businesses and houses in cities and rural areas were built from remittances of expatriates. Bangladesh railway is in shambles and so is Bangladesh Biman. Roads on the outskirt of Comilla town near the EPZ enclave and most other places are not drivable. Narrow paved roads within all municipalities I visited were horrendously broken down. Most existing paved roads in almost all the cities are so wavy and uneven that riding on a car or three wheelers gives the nostalgia of a horse ride. A few of the 409 high schools I drove by from which no one passed the last SSC exam looked like animal shelters.

The northern districts of the country are not much more developed today than they were before Khaleda's accession to power. While in junior high, I read about Barisal as the only district not being connected by railway. It was also one of the poorest districts in the country at that time. While driven around the city last month what I noticed almost felt like a flashback of what I read during my childhood years. Although my round-trip travel to Barisal was by river, I was told it takes six to eight hours by bumpy road and river ferries to travel to Dhaka. Of course, if you live inside the panoramic Cantonment areas of Dhaka and Bogra, you will live the fantasies of a fairy land.

Of course, some development works were done. Otherwise how else would the BNP politicians have made so much fortune and the party coffers be so full? Many observers allege that the PM turns a blind eye to the corruption of her ministers and lawmakers because her family members are also involved in the same activities. Overlooking their alleged corruption has also bought her their unwavering loyalty and guaranteed her continued reign as the chief executive in a majestically setting of power and perquisites.

Khaleda's current term of office is also marred by obliteration of the country's judiciary, politicization of civil service, and growth of religious extremism culminating now in country wide terrorist menaces. Poverty alleviation did not register much improvement. Macroeconomic stability is distorted by rising prices of daily essentials. Continued government borrowing from NCBs is causing wide swings in daily interest rates. The energy ministry is running feverishly from NCBs to local foreign banks to foreign lending agencies to borrow necessary funds for importing petroleum. The country's foreign reserves are dependent on remittances from expatriates. Unemployment rate is nearly 30 percent. So when the PM claims BNP's accomplishments she is simply invoking an age old question: When do politicians tell the truth?

To win the majority seats in the general election, the AL leadership must neutralize the spawning of misinformation by the ruling alliance with irrefutable statistics. For example, challenge them with facts before their misinformation resonates the air waves.

In addition, the merits of the following initiatives may be seriously mulled over in AL's election campaign and winning strategies:

• Sheikh Hasina still has a lot of public appeal. However, whenever she speaks in political gatherings she should follow a script. All others AL members should follow the same format.
• AL should encourage younger and new faces to address public gatherings by following a previously written speech.
• Ask the people that if the economy is growing bigger and bigger, as BNP claims, then who is getting that higher growth and why are they becoming poorer and poorer? Ask the people, who gets the new jobs that are created?
• If the country is producing more goods than ever before, why then the prices are rising? Why everything is more expensive than ever before?
• Explain to people how individual liberties guaranteed by the constitution have been denigrated by the BNP functionaries and criminals were granted amnesties,
• Organize political meetings at upazilla and ward levels as often as possible. The primitive stratagem of great gatherings in Paltan Maidan, street agitations, and hartals will not win elections any more.
• Publicize that greed and extortions by BNP hooligans are scaring honest people out of business investment,
• Ask the people if they have more money in their pocket than before BNP came to power? Lawmakers and ministers received two salary and benefit increases over the last four years.
• AL must recruit young individuals of good education and character as political neophytes for the party's future in contrast to BNP's young and wealthy.
• Finally, AL must preemptively make a full unilateral disclosure of the assets of all its potential nominees. This will put BNP on the defensive.

BNP-Jamaat alliance cannot be wrecked unless Nizami himself blasts a bomb in the PMO premises and gets caught on a surveillance video. Bear in mind that the alliance is a marriage of two rightist parties, each with its own plans.

The alliance offers BNP the prospects for being the majority party while Jamaat gets a protected parasitic growth to spread its fundamentalist ideology among the rural populace. The alliance guarantees Khaleda to firmly root her son's future prospects in political power. She will continue embracing Jamaat no matter what and at the same time keep overlooking BNP ministers and lawmakers alleged culpabilities in exchange for their resolute loyalty.

AL leadership must articulate this sinister design to the masses astutely and may even seek professional guidance from political scientists and game theorists, if necessary.

The author is Professor of Economics, Eastern Michigan University.