Looking back at those times
THREE years ago this month, to the relief of the people of Bangladesh, the caretaker cabal led by Iajuddin Ahmed was pushed from office through a proclamation of emergency. What then transpired was simple historical necessity brought about through the rise of a new administration that quickly went into the business of setting things back in order.
Backed by the army, the Fakhruddin government made it known that it would be in office for close to two years, a period of time that would be given over to restoring certain fundamentals without which the idea of democracy would only dwindle into a pipe dream. It was reform of the political system, indeed of all the corollaries that came with the system, that the new caretakers, armed with emergency powers, meant to go for.
Three years on, with a new popularly elected government in charge, it would be well to reflect on things that have been because of the new caretaker government and that might not have been had the Iajuddin coterie been allowed to hang on to power. Make no mistake: it was an entrenched regime that Iajuddin ran, or tried to run. The president-cum-chief advisor gave scant importance to his council of advisors.
The chief election commissioner, stubborn in his refusal to ensure a fair election, oversaw the preparation of a voters' list that included individuals who did not exist. Tens of thousands of fictitious voters made it to the list even as innumerable others, those who had in earlier years qualified to vote, saw their names struck off. The Public Service Commission was in the vicious grip of partisan politics. The Anti-Corruption Commission had only gums and no teeth.
The interim regime put paid to all that. No matter how often and in how many ways the Fakhruddin administration is pilloried by people (and there is no dearth of them, especially those who had dreamed of a dubious return to power with Iajuddin running the show), the truth is incontrovertible that the two years between early 2007 and late 2008 brought about a positive transformation in some significant sectors in the public domain.
A.T.M. Shamsul Huda and his colleagues in the Election Commission have without question restored the credibility of the body through their deft handling, with occasional stumbles, of its operations. The PSC was freed of questionable elements and put back to purposeful work. And the ACC, with Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury at the top, put the fear of the law and morality among the corrupt segments of the political class.
The army did a good thing of resisting temptations of seizing power. It did an even better thing of preparing a fresh electoral roll through incorporating voter identity cards, thereby precluding any chances of a rigging of election results.
And yet there are those who today question the legitimacy of the Fakhruddin caretaker government. Let there be no doubt that the ouster of the Iajuddin outfit was one of the more positive things (two others were the fall of the Ershad regime in 1990 and the repeal of the notorious Indemnity Ordinance in the late 1990s) to happen in the history of this country. Had the change over not come in, had Iajuddin and his political patrons prevailed, fire and fury would sweep the country. Good would yet be battling evil on the streets of the land, of the kind we were all witness to in late October 2006. That is the unvarnished truth.
But there are too the darker aspects of the emergency we will not forget. The uncivil manner of the arrest of Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia, the humiliation inflicted on elderly politicians and businessmen on remand, the onslaught on the universities and the mistreatment of academics and students alike -- these and similar happenings have taken much of the shine off the Fakhruddin caretaker administration. It was folly bordering on criminality to try to prevent the chief of the Awami League from returning home from abroad, to try to force the chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to go into exile. The "innovation" that was the minus-two theory was a joke.
The attempt to drive a wedge among the political classes through encouraging party "reforms" with the assistance of a handful of politicians was an embarrassing exercise the army-backed government could have done without. Looking the other way as some men gave shape to new political parties, even as emergency harshness was applied to all other parties, caused cracks in the government's armour of integrity. Some advisors spoke a little too much and irritated the nation.
And so there it is, these good and not so good memories we have of the times between January 2007 and December 2008. On balance, though, there is little way of avoiding the truth. It is a simple truth. Because of the Fakhruddin Ahmed caretaker administration, we are better off today than we were when Iajuddin's men commandeered the country. Things are not perfect, sure. But we do breathe a lot easier than we did before.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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