LDP steps into ring

Something of the sort was supposed to have occurred two and a half years ago in 2004 when the Bikalpa Dhara was formed. However, due to a brutal campaign of violence and intimidation, the BNP managed to keep all but a few from jumping ship then.

In addition, in early 2004, the charge-sheet against the BNP-led government did not look quite as bad as it does now, and it was possible to believe that there was time for the party to redeem itself. Today, such an argument seems markedly less convincing.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

This latest offensive has been timed to perfection. Retribution against the 100-plus BNP leaders who have joined is already underway, but this will be limited by the hand-over of power to the caretaker government today, and Col Oli is on record promising "an eye for an eye" to those who would target the LDP. This is not 2004.

Furthermore, the birth of the LDP comes at a time when the BNP and AL are locked in mortal combat over the issue of who is to head the caretaker government and the election commission, in which third party opinion will be at a premium.

As such, the LDP essentially makes the AL-led opposition's argument for it. Everything that the opposition (and, indeed, the media and civil society) has been saying for the past two years with respect to corruption and misgovernance and extremism is now being seconded by people from within the ruling party.

Certainly, the rebels are "disgruntled." That goes without saying. But such unhappiness does not render their critique invalid. To the contrary, the criticism has much more weight than anything the AL or even the media and civil society have been saying. The fact that the accusations are coming from a section who were until recently BNP loyalists, must come as sweet vindication for the AL.

Why?
The official line is that the LDP has been formed in protest "against corruption, injustice, terrorism, and failure." To take the LDP at its word, what the party hopes to do is to regroup under a new banner the BNP elements who have had no hand in the misdeeds of the past five years that have both tarnished the reputation of the BNP and damaged the country.

A less charitable explanation would be to suggest that Col Oli, like Dr Badruddoza before him, had found himself on the losing end of a power struggle within the party, and that the new party might be his way to regain a leading role in Bangladeshi politics.

The two explanations are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, both are true to some extent. But it must be remembered that not all of the 100-plus senior BNP leaders who have joined the LDP had been side-lined, and that even if personal ambition played some part in their calculations, this is neither surprising nor necessarily evidence of their lack of sincerity.

The crucial fact that underpins the emergence of the LDP is the belief that the BNP's reputation is both tarnished beyond redemption and that the BNP is on its last legs.

The scale of the defection signifies that enough party members believe that the party is in precarious enough of a position that it makes sense to jump ship. Those who have joined the LDP clearly believe that the BNP can neither win a fair election nor be able to engineer a victory and hold on to power that way.

Their hope is that the public disenchantment with the BNP can be largely confined to Hawa Bhaban and the family of the prime minister, and that, like a cancer, if these elements are cut out, that the remainder of the body can be saved, in the form of the new party.

As such, though it would be over-stating it to call this a split, the LDP is very much an ex-BNP party and it will be interesting to see, going forward, whether it will appeal to anyone without a BNP background.

Short-term
The short-term impact is the most significant. The formation of the LDP is a body blow to the BNP. Right now, smack in the middle of the showdown between BNP and AL, 102 (and counting) senior BNP leaders have laid down their arms. They have not gone over to the other side, but the impact is almost as devastating.

In the coming showdown over acceptability of the caretaker and election commission chiefs, the LDP can provide crucial support to the opposition bloc, that would help cement public opinion in favour of their demands.

This also comes as a huge psychological blow to the BNP rank and file in an environment where confidence and belief in victory are crucial. Injecting this kind of doubt at this moment in time and providing an escape route is likely to be extremely demoralizing.

Importantly, the formation of LDP gives the skeptical or the conflicted (as well as the aggrieved) a way out. Any BNP party worker will now be thinking twice, maybe three times, before deciding to put everything on the line for the party.

BNP has already pulled back from its original plan of a showdown with the AL at Paltan Maidan tomorrow, a further indication that the party high command suspects that the wind may now be blowing in the other direction.

Medium-term
In the medium-term the LDP could do serious damage to the BNP at the polls. Once the BNP has finalized its nominations, there will be potentially hundreds more "disgruntled" senior party members who could flock to the LDP.

In addition, the party could end up fielding as many as two dozen sitting MPs and has a good shot at doubling this representation in Parliament. Most importantly, the LDP has the capability of harming the BNP fatally in just about every constituency in the country. Given that over 100 seats were decided by less than 15% of the vote in 2001, the impact of the LDP on marginal seats could be immense.

Of course, even without the LDP, the BNP would have been in trouble in a free and fair election, but the LDP can throw any number of seats to the AL, and, by claiming the mantle of President Ziaur Rahman, has a good chance of making significant gains in its own right.

But it should be remembered that if we get to the stage where there is a free and fair election in which the LDP could play a decisive role, the game would already be more or less lost for the BNP, whose entire strategy has been aimed at avoiding such an eventuality.

Long-term
Much has been made of the 50% undecided voters who are disenchanted with both the BNP and the AL. Can the LDP be that third party that would appeal to the disillusioned and dissatisfied who are turned off by politics as usual and looking for something new?

This seems unlikely. A more realistic vision is for the LDP to resuscitate the BNP whose reputation now lies in ruins. The LDP hope is that if the more egregious offenders, such as Tarique Rahman, can be isolated and defenestrated, that the rest of the party apparatus can be salvaged.

The LDP might then emerge as a re-formed (if not reformed) BNP that would essentially look something like the party, circa 1991. If not 1981. But, of course, this would have to be a BNP without what for years has been its main asset, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.

Whether either Col Oli or Badruddoza have the statute within the party rank and file to unite the rump of the party behind them following such a purge, how power will be distributed between the two, and what direction the party will take in terms of ideology, all remain to be seen.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.