Sense & Insensibility
Whither political party reform?
One stroke of the pen…no…one word of the mouth…and there goes intra-party reform to oblivion! Gone with the (bad) wind! Today, dear readers, you need no better proof to be convinced that it has been dictatorship all along, and it will be dictatorship in the future. To be specific, look at the way Khaleda Zia fired party General Secretary Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan and Joint-Secretary General Ashraf Hossain.
Think of it! They were not chunoputis (small fry) or nondescript activists who earned a living by shouting party slogans from the fringes. They were rather known to be die-hard BNP loyalists who had stuck by Khaleda Zia through thick and thin for decades. And yet they were served the death sentence without being given any opportunity to protest or argue their case before her. What else but "prashad shorojantro" (palace conspiracy) can you call this?
This single act of the BNP chairperson tells aplenty how this party or, for that matter, all other parties in Bangladesh are being run. To the media, to the donors, to the foreign mission heads and to the people, these leaders have been speaking unremittingly about democracy and how they have been sacrificing everything they possessed to uphold democracy! And they cried and they wept…they fretted and they fumed…while describing how the opposition, the 'ekti mohol,' have been conniving to destroy democracy in the country. They also animatedly described the role of various foreign powers working from behind the scene to destabilise the "popular" government.
Going back to the beheading of the two BNP stalwarts, frankly we fail to understand what faults BNP chairperson had found in Abdul Mannan and Asraf Hossain? To us they were a perfect examples of blind loyalty…to be blunt…sycophancy. During the last five years, and even the previous tenure of five years, they had endorsed without even batting an eyelid any and everything that the chairperson and her small coterie did and undid.
Even while holding the second most powerful post in the party for many year at a stretch, if he had a second opinion on certain matters of national importance, Abdul Mannan never demonstrated that he had the guts to go up to her and say, madam, I feel this instruction coming from your office/Hawa Bhaban will not bring good fortune for the country, so I think you may kindly rethink your decision. If he had done it quite frequently, today his head wouldn't have been rolling on the carpet.
Today, one feels a bit concerned thinking about the kind of people who are going to replace them, or have replaced them already. Today, one begins to worry a little thinking about the fate of BNP, the large party that came to power for two terms. One, in fact, wonders whether Khandaker Delwar Hossain is the best possible replacement for Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan. We have not become oblivious of those unsavoury news items about him and his sons. Antecedents matter in politics too!
The unilateral decision of Khaleda Zia once again brings forth the imperative of bringing about changes in the style party heads are running the parties. Democratic practice is totally absent there. Everywhere it is the same picture -- chairperson or president is surrounded by many tiers of sycophants who are always busy elbowing out one another. They laugh out when the leader laughs out, and they weep when the leader weeps. In the mazaar of the dead father or husband of the leader they jostle openly and shamelessly to be photographed with the leader.
Things took a comical turn when the current caretaker government took over power and declared that the political parties would have to shed their old skins, like those reptiles do. This announcement let loose a charade of mud slinging amongst the senior leaders, especially of the two major political parties, over the issue of reforms and who would give leadership.
They enjoyed the media glare for a while, but one by one got pushed back into the background by the others. Then there started a rat race for winning the favour of the leader to work as her spokesman and play taped nirdeshona (whatever that is!) for the janata. Some of the leaders even brought out ancient caps to look important on camera!
But nothing resulted in the much talked about reforms in the political parties that everyone have been waiting for. These parties now suffer from leadership crisis. No one leader trusts the other. No one can tolerate the idea of someone else becoming the prime minister. If one tries to climb over the wall others pull him down, like that stale joke we know of. The manner in which leaders and semi-leaders are disappearing behind bars one by one actually reminds me of the famous story of Agatha Christie…. "And then there were none…"
Shahnoor Wahid is a Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.
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