Ground Realities
History can reclaim territory it has lost
THE reformists, if they are really that, in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party have clearly fallen on bad days. Saifur Rahman has made a safe exit out of the country. How he managed to do that and who let him go remains a mystery. Mannan Bhuiyan is in jail. Both men have now seen fit to acknowledge once more the primacy of Khaleda Zia in the party. That has left Major Hafizuddin Ahmed in the soup. The army officer-turned-footballer-turned-politician now tells us that the caretaker government has taken the country back by a decade. Really? If that is an expression of wisdom, we the people will be content to confine ourselves to the kingdom of naivete.
That Begum Zia will continue to be a force in her party should have been evident to Saifur Rahman and Mannan Bhuiyan a long time ago, before they allowed themselves to be part of this reformist charade in their party. And what exactly has compelled Hafizuddin Ahmed to round on the caretakers is a mystery that is yet to be unearthed.
Meanwhile, there is all around us this huge question of what lies ahead for politics in the country. All this matter of whether or not the leading political players in the country will go for a dialogue with the government has been raising all manner of questions. And, of course, for obvious reasons.
If you have noticed, there is suddenly a certain chill in the wind, with many of the leading political figures having been carted off to prison. Things appear to have reached a stage where the government will find it hard to talk to anyone, given the fierceness with which it has been cracking down on politics.
That said, there is still the rather surprising refrain of general elections being held by the end of the year, one that now almost threatens to turn into a cliché. Elections, we can safely tell ourselves, are always charming little demonstrations of the popular will.
But when a government gets into the business of promising elections and, at the same time, makes it clear that politicians accused of corruption must face the music, especially in a fragile political set-up as Bangladesh's, things get a trifle disconcerting.
Think of the Awami League. It has insisted, at least so far, that Sheikh Hasina must be freed in the interest of a credible electoral exercise. That is beginning to cause hope to come alive in the BNP where the fate of its own detained chairperson is concerned.
Khondokar Delwar Hossain, evidently relishing the sad plight of the reformists in his party, would like nothing better than a unified, concerted campaign for the release of both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia. And that is political expediency for those in real distress, even if you are nauseated by the thought of equating the former with the latter.
So, all around you, there is a certain feeling of unease. Some might go a step further and call it uncertainty. Take your pick. After all, when an election commissioner begins to think loudly of a change (in times when Parliament does not exist) in the constitution, it is indeed uncertainty that stares you in the face.
And we all thought that it was always Parliament that was supreme, that caretaker governments did not possess the mandate or the right to play around with the constitution, or even think of doing so. It is these fears that keep us on our toes, just as thoughts of a Truth Commission keep us nailed to both disquiet and repressed fury.
Yes, of course there is a paramount need for a qualitative change in the nation's politics. But, as these past months of experimenting with the internal dynamics of the political parties have so patently demonstrated, it is a job only politicians (and we are not including here the predators who in the name of politics squeezed the country dry, in the manner of an overworked lemon, in the five years between 2001 and 2006) are equipped to do.
But our political classes, for all their questions and reservations about the doings of the caretakers, should be acknowledging to themselves the difficulty of going back to politics as usual. These emergency times should have been a lesson for all of them, in the sense that they must know that impunity will no more be a given, that it will be penalised.
That, of course, presupposes the enactment and adoption of reforms, which truly and substantially matter if democracy is to totter to its feet through replenishing the energy in its roots.
For starters, Article 70 of the constitution, a sad encumbrance on the right or ability of lawmakers to vote on legislation in consonance with their conscience, will need to go.
You cannot have Article 70 and yet believe that democracy will underscore your way of life. Once this article goes, but not before that, can you reasonably expect prime ministerial government to actually give way to cabinet government. And cabinet government is important, for considerably more reasons than we can think of.
Suffice to say for now that it will bring into the entire governance process a high measure of accountability. In a big way, it might also lead to a culture where the parliamentary opposition diligently prepares to govern someday through giving shape to a shadow cabinet.
It has been our singular misfortune as a nation that Parliament, for all the nobility of thought and profundity of dreams associated with it, has remained captive to the majority party and, in turn, the majority party has cheerfully tied itself to the apron strings, or the coattails as the case may be, of its leader.
We need to cut ourselves loose from such a debilitating tradition, for politics based on unquestioned partisan loyalty leads inexorably to a haemorhaging of democracy.
A legislative body hobbled by a personality cult or emasculated by an arrogant majority is not intellectually equipped to provide a sense of direction to the country. And direction is not what you will come by unless parliament arms itself with the authority to discuss within its hallowed halls everything under the sun -- education, diplomacy, defence, internal security and what have you.
It will not be an effective forum for public debate and policy formulation as long as the prime minister and the leader of the opposition do not tangle over the issues at question time. And do not forget that when parliament comes to be presided over by a speaker who cannot leap across party loyalty and reach a higher plane of thought, nothing that it does will reassure people about their individual and collective future, as also the future of their children.
It is possible to go back to the roots, to idealism as we once shaped it in 1971. History does more than simply move forward. There are times when it can return to the spots where it has stumbled, or has lain wounded, to reclaim lost territory.
In our instance, that lost territory is but the landscape where once the four fundamental principles of nationalism, secularism, socialism and democracy were our beacon unto the future. Get them back. If you do, this cannibalism we go through will be no more.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments