Elections in Bangladesh and elsewhere

I was looking behind him to see a procession of his supporters, but none was there. I was surprised to find that a candidate for the membership in the British Parliament was doing election campaign alone without a big procession following him, chanting thunderous slogans in his favour, waving their hands in the air. My election experience at home jolted me.

"Would you please vote for me," the gentleman asked me for my vote.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

"I am not a voter, but my cousin and his wife are voters; I would rather ask them to talk to you, please wait." I went inside the house to tell my cousin about the gentleman.

My cousin came out to meet the candidate. He said to the gentleman: "You know, we from the Indian sub-continent usually vote Labour."

The gentleman looked happy at the words of my cousin. He offered my cousin a sticker containing the slogan: "I love Labour," requesting him to put it on the windowpane of his house. Of course, the sign of a heart in red replaced the word "love" on the sticker.

"You see, I am a black, so it's better for me not to put that sticker on my window." My cousin said. (People from the sub-continent are also black, not brown, in the eyes of the white British.)

"It's OK. Thank you very much. Good night." The candidate shook hand with us, and went to the door of the next house.

Later I came to know that the lone campaigner won the election.

The next general election to be held in Bangladesh is only a few months away from now. Will it be as usual as the elections took place before in this country?

We may remain assured that in the coming election the candidates will be spending lots of money to bring out procession on the street one after another for months. They will spend a lot of money to print posters containing their photos, to run their election camps built at every nook and corner of their constituencies, to erect colorful gates on the roads, making the narrow roads narrower; and what more, each of them will make a fat contribution in their party fund. God knows, where to this fund ultimately goes.

Every procession costs money. These days in Bangladesh nobody takes part in a political procession without being paid a "fee"; nobody writes a word of a political slogan on a wall without receiving money. Gone those days when dedicated party workers used to take part in the procession, write slogans on the wall free of cost. Politics in Bangladesh is now a business, a money-minting machine, where from the political parties will get dedicated workers for them?

Why does a candidate spend so much money from his pocket to get elected as a member of parliament? Do they love this country and the people so much that to serve them they are ready to sacrifice any amount of their "hard-earned" money?

According to the constitution of the country, the post of member of parliament is not a lucrative one. The allowance paid to a member of the parliament is a trifle sum. Each of the parliaments of Bangladesh passes a bill, allowing the members of the parliament to import a duty-free car. A duty-free car is not very much an alluring bite to entice someone to spend enormous amounts of money in his/her election campaign; then why the candidates "invest" so much money in their electioneering?

When a British parliament passes a bill, which benefits its members, it is customary in that country that the members of the parliament which has passed the bill will not enjoy that benefit; and only from the next parliament on, the members will enjoy that benefit. In Bangladesh, this rule is not followed.

"How much will you be able to spend in the election campaign?" is the first question asked to a candidate by the nomination board of any of our two large political parties. In the eyes of these two political parties, who have been the supper heavy weights in our politics for the last fifteen years, the eligibility of a candidate depends on his/her ability to spend money.

The omen is there that the next parliament election in Bangladesh will be a bloody one. Inter-party as well as intra-party conflicts will take place during the election months. Many of the prospective candidates will try to physically obliterate one another to make an easy sailing in bagging the party nomination as well as to win the election. By making politics and power as the means of minting money, the political leaders have made their lives unsafe.

The confrontational politics in Bangladesh has got nothing to do with the ideologies of the rival political parties, though many of us naively think so. It is all out and out corruption that is behind the confrontational politics in this country. Every party dies for to be in power, because in power means license to corruption for the leaders, petit-leaders and even for the grass-roots level members of the party.

Every political leader, every political party in Bangladesh is a crusader/jihadi against corruption; and yet every year we become the world champion in corruption. What a paradox!

A member of parliament is a legislator, and nothing but a legislator. But in our country we have made them get involved in development works of their constituencies. A great mistake we have done by enlarging the role of a legislator beyond his/her sphere.

Another election anecdote to end with: a few years back I was in Brussels, the capital city of Belgium. One morning I came out on the street at around 10 am only to find out the usually busy street was so calm and quiet. I found the metro (underground) station as well as the bus stop equally deserted, as if the city was under seige. I met a Belgian friend and asked him if anything was going wrong. He said: "Oh, you don't know, today the general election is going on in Belgium, so it is a holiday; and everybody is enjoying a day off at home."

In Bangladesh, we make an election day look like a festival. And after election we get a government which does not bother to solve the electricity problem, cannot provide us with water, fertilizer, cannot keep the price of essentials at sustainable level, and only becomes successful in making corruption the order of the day.

Faruque Hasan is a freelance contributor of the Daily Star.