Shuffling the deck-chairs

But from the start, the most serious impediment to this process has been the president-cum-chief adviser himself. This was, incidentally, the message communicated by the AL and LDP to an EU team earlier this week, but I do not worry that reiterating the point will make me sound like some kind of dupe since it is by now blindingly obvious to the entire country.

At every turn, it has been the president who has stood in the way of the necessary reforms, even to the extent of over-ruling his council of advisers on a routine basis. It was for this reason that the four advisers chose to resign earlier this month.

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Even the ones who chose to remain did so not necessarily as a vote of confidence in the president or to signal that they were happy with how he was conducting affairs, but in the hope that they would still be able to influence things for the better and to do everything in their power to try to bring about free and fair elections.

The latest in the on-again-off-again saga is that election commissioner Zakaria will be asked to go on leave but not commissioner Modabbir. However, with less than 40 days of the 90 left in which to hold elections, it seems as though it is too little and far too late to make any difference now.

In fact, since the AL-led 14-party alliance made clear on December 18 that it would not go to elections under the current election schedule all this maneuvering seems to be little more than shuffling the deck-chairs on the Titanic. At this point, there doesn't seem like there is much sense in making these kinds of cosmetic changes.

Of course, this all could have been avoided. Had the reforms such as the removal of Aziz and Zakaria, reconstitution of the EC, and correction of the voter list been done at the start, then we would be well on our way to elections.

But these did not happen and the reason for this is that clearly the game-plan from the beginning was to declare the 90-day time-period for holding elections to be written in stone and to delay and foot-drag and stonewall and stall until it was too late to make any meaningful change, all the while insisting that the 90-day time-frame had to be honoured.

So here we are. Once again we have changes which are too little to matter and offered too late in the day to make a difference. Even had they been agreed to a week ago, when it might have made a difference, the fact that the returning officers are still compromised and that police personnel have not been transferred and the voter list remains a mess means that it wouldn't have ensured much of anything, anyway.

Right now, it all seems like a bad joke, but, somehow, I am not laughing.

So where do we go from here? Thursday was a hartal, and, if the AL is to be believed, was merely the first of many to come. If the AL-led alliance has decided that it will not go to elections under the current schedule and with Iajuddin as chief adviser, then it doesn't seem to me as though it has much option except to continue with the agitation.

We have seen what the alliance is capable of in the past two months with the oborodhs that have shut the country down time and again. The only thing that is preventing a recurrence of such a situation is the threat of army in aid of civil administration. But it seems to me that, one way or the other, we are heading towards a major confrontation, and time is running out to avert it.

The big rallies of the past week have shown that both sides are powerful and popular and that likely neither side could win in a showdown. And since a showdown is what we are going to have come election day, if not before, one wonders where this leaves us.

As has been noted elsewhere, the army has helped to ensure security for elections in the past and there is nothing intrinsically sinister about appealing to its help for conducting elections. But the situation grows more complicated when one side wants to stand in the elections and the other side will mobilize everything in its power to make sure that the elections do not happen.

It is an unenviable situation for the army and one fully understands the reported reluctance to enter the fray. Either way, someone is going to be unhappy.

It is now quite apparent to most of the country that elections without the AL would be bogus and that for the army to thus man the barricades in the service of elections as is would be severely problematic.

But, by the same token, if the army decides not to enforce the elections as is then it has to answer the question as to what exactly it will enforce and to what extent what it does will be acceptable to the general public.

Is there a way out, a compromise that could head off such a dire eventuality? I can see only one, and that is for Iajuddin to voluntarily relinquish the chief advisership and appoint, as per the Constitution, either Mahmudul Amin Choudhury or an eminent person in his stead.

But if that were a likely solution, then we wouldn't be here in the first place. So meanwhile we just continue shuffling the deckchairs as the water-level rises.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.