A probable conspiracy theory

That, in a nutshell, is the story of the mountain which gave birth to a mouse. Thank our lucky stars that we lived to watch a rerun of that spectacle last week when Awami League and its allies did about-face and agreed to participate in the parliamentary election. After months of bloodshed, violence, big-mouthing, full-throated invectives and threats of dire consequences, lo and behold, Mount Sudha has produced a mouse!

It is, at once, good news and bad news. The good news is that the country will see a surcease, albeit temporary, in political chaos. There will be a national election with the participation of all political parties and, hopefully, the country will inch towards a national reconciliation. But the bad news is no less important. There is a probable conspiracy theory that the nub of the onion is not going to change.

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So, if the only thing constant in life is change, the constants are not likely to change. Those who ran for elections in the past are going to run again. Those who got money out of power will get power out of money and then more money again. The crooks and criminals will enter the race, then the parliament, slowly taking up their positions in our national life for another five years. Basically, we are going to see more of the same.

The crux of the conspiracy lies there, where all parties worked in cahoots so that nothing would change. When the Supreme Court stayed the landmark High Court verdict on disclosure of the candidate's profile, the politicians could not care less. In case you have not noticed, corruption has been shoved from the centre to the fringe of discussions. Instead, the politicians made politics so rough that people wanted to forget everything, and begged them to go to the polls.

I must say the cabal of conspirators has planned it well. They carefully calculated every move, and each time synchronized cause with its effect. In the process they have discredited every institution that could possibly throw them a challenge. The judiciary, the police, to some extent the army, the media, the intellectuals, the business community, one by one, everybody tried and failed, and got their reputation more or less tarnished.

That leaves out only the people, the fickle-minded people, who are pre-occupied with their own survival struggle. Once in a while they get upset and bring about a Kansat or a Phulbari, but then return to the rigors of life merely to hold body and soul together for another day. It was the conspiracy of the politicians to make that struggle more difficult for the people, so that they would not dare again to scrutinize how the politicians liked to do their business.

Thus, under the surface of struggle the politicians are actually conjoined by complicity. When Ershad was sentenced a former minister from another regime went to his house and enquired about his whereabouts. Months ago, when the son of a former prime minister had visited the same house whose occupant had served time before, he was accompanied by none other than the enforcer of law, the then incumbent home minister of the country.

Now that is one rare quality amongst these politicians. They can be readily detached from one party and attached to another. And that is possible because all political parties have identical designs, where leaders are like interchangeable components which can be removed from one machine and fitted in another.

In all consideration, the outcome of the political upheavals has protected the statusquo so that those who have plundered the country will slip the net. It is the same old trick when a desperate thief sets fire to the house so that he can slink away in the resulting chaos. Thieves on this side, thieves on that side, nothing will change for them, because what has prevailed in the senseless politics is the solidarity of the brotherhood of crooks.

There has been a conspiracy for sure, hatched by the leaders in this country to protect their keeps. Thus what is happening in the smokescreen for democracy is a class struggle, one that rallies like-minded looters to protect their class interest so that they and their families can thrive for generations. If not to fathers, nominations have gone to their sons. Sister has come in lieu of the brother. Brother for brother, wife for husband, daughter for father were already there. No matter what, politics has to run and stay in the family.

The point is that the families of politicians together make a larger family, and they agree to disagree so that the business does not go out of their hands. If one group demonstrates on the street and another sends the cops after them, still other groups cheering them up or down, all of it is division of labour that allows different members of the family to handle different parts of the business. Bengali nationalism, Bangladeshi nationalism, secularism, religious fundamentalism, communism, scientific socialism, unscientific socialism, these are but feigned denominations used to allocate responsibilities.

Mount Ida was the birthplace of Zeus. Likewise, Sudha Bhaban has been looked on as the cradle of liberal and liberation forces, since the daughter of Shiekh Mujibur Rahman lives in that house. That is why freedom-loving people were shocked when her party signed an agreement with a lesser known Islamic group taking a lenient view of the fatwa.

The issue here is not that the mountain has conspired to give birth to a mouse. Rather, the issue is how far it could go to take that conspiracy to its logical conclusion. For a moment last week the mountain looked like a dirty rat.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.