Editorial
BNP's most serious crisis
Bhuiyan's expulsion makes split inevitable
Begum Khaleda Zia's arrest on Monday was clearly a major blow for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. What, however, came as a new blow was the peremptory manner in which the BNP chairperson announced the expulsion of party secretary general Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan from the party. If the first blow was precipitated by the Anti-Corruption Commission's case against Begum Zia, the second was brought about by the harsh move of the former prime minister herself. To what extent the BNP will handle this twin crisis is something that political observers will be watching keenly. And that is only natural, given that the occupants of the two most powerful positions in the party are now positioned against each other.
It will perhaps be restating the obvious when we suggest that BNP leaders and activists across the country are now in a dilemma regarding the future of their party. Of far bigger significance, though, is the fact that Mannan Bhuiyan's expulsion from the party by the chairperson has patently brought into focus the malaise that the BNP in particular and the major political parties in general have fundamentally suffered from. It will be noted that where Bhuiyan is concerned, there is nothing in the record to suggest that he has ever rebelled against his party chairperson or demonstrated any lack of confidence in her leadership. His only fault, it appears, is to have questioned the way the BNP conducted itself in the last five years as the party of government and to have suggested that perhaps some efforts toward self-analysis and self-correction were necessary within the party. Mannan Bhuiyan was certainly not alone in expressing such views. Indeed, a very large number of party activists, to say nothing of BNP sympathisers and supporters, shared his point of view. That being the reality, one might well raise the question of why Begum Zia found it hard to permit an open discussion on the reform proposals at the level of the party's central hierarchy as well as among its district and other tiers of leadership. Her reason behind expelling Bhuiyan was that she thought the suggestions for reforms were an affront to her and a questioning of her leadership. It is a regrettable attitude, made worse by her curious claim that all the anti-BNP criticism was actually a result of envy on the part of her detractors at what she claimed the huge successes of her government. Till the very end, she refused to accept even the slightest criticism of her having led a corrupt administration. Her refusal to accept even a modicum of open discussion in the party on reforms depicts the kind of leadership that has brought the BNP to its present sorry pass.
We believe that a split in the BNP will have grave repercussions for democratic politics. We therefore urge those veteran leaders of the party not embroiled in the Zia-Bhuiyan spat to work behind the scenes in order to bring about a rapprochement between the chairperson and the secretary general and also initiate a process toward internal party reforms. The goal should be one of transforming the BNP into a vibrant, modern and democratic party, of the kind Bangladesh is in sore need of.
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