Strategically Speaking
Revisiting 1/11
With the national elections round the corner, one feels that there is a need at this time for a serious introspection of the developments that led to January 11, 2007 and all that has happened since then, so that we may take home the lessons therefrom to avoid repetition of the mistakes, and avoid the disruptions and pain that these have caused us. It is essential to determine how wise or "otherwise" we are, or are we, as a nation, any the worse for wear after 18 months of a unique political dispensation. What have we learnt in the interregnum, if anything?
Come December 2008 there will be parliamentary election, and hopefully the country will have its elected representatives to run the affairs of the state, after 2 years of absence of political activities and democracy being kept on hold.
However, an elected government does not necessarily mean an efficient government -- but one hopes it will certainly be a government accountable to the people -- through the parliament.
The question that automatically comes up is will the elected persons be "good people?" Unfortunately, not all of them are likely to qualify in the objective scrutiny as "good" as one can understand from the very rueful comments of the CEC relating to the candidates for the forthcoming mayoral and municipal elections, that many of them are bad eggs with questionable past.
But let us start from a very basic question that as a citizen one would like to ask the politicians. (I hesitate to call them leaders -- since in my estimate none of them qualifies as one. Had that been so we would have been spared the prolonged caretaker government's rule of the past eighteen months). Is it not the time to have a rethink about the idea of the caretaker government (CTG)?
Very few will contest the view that the concept of the CTG is a manifestation of the mutual distrust of the two major political parties. It was an expedient to ensure a free a fair election -- which the then opposition (AL) thought was not possible if the party in power (BNP) was allowed to retain hold on the reins of state power during the conduct of the election. The first CTG, following Ershad's departure, had conducted a very successful election in 1991, and AL's cue came from there.
But we were made aware of the fact that every good thing could be distorted, and the party in power could manipulate every honest system to win elections at any cost. The BNP led 4-party alliance had done everything conceivable to see that the opposition did not come to power.
Just one example -- the voter list, a list that had more than fifteen million ghost/false voters -- illustrates this point; and Tk. 60 crore was spent on it, which apparently everybody seems to have forgotten about.
Can anyone forget the Dhaka-10 by-election of 2004? There is no need either to mention the various other machinations the erstwhile BNP government had devised which made Iajuddin's CTG a virtual extension of the alliance government. Thus, did some people with dishonest intentions and wicked mind spoil a good arrangement? Should we then continue with a system that is vulnerable to manipulation?
If getting a good election was the good side of the caretaker system, the flip side of it was having an unelected government running the affairs of the state -- the consequences need hardly be recounted. But if certain things have gone awry for the CTG -- some think it is due to their lack of sense of direction while others think it to be so in spite of their good intentions -- one cannot lay the entire blame on them.
Two years is twenty-four months too long for a group of disparate individuals, albeit with impeccable record of academic brilliance or honesty, to fill the political vacuum, or run the affairs of the state without the inevitable hiccups.
That brings automatically to the next lesson that relates particularly to the political parties -- which is how the political parties should conduct their business in the future. It must have become immensely clear to them that whatever they do, they cannot by their foolhardiness precipitate events that might result in democracy's prolonged state of limbo or facilitate supra-constitutional forces' inroad into the country's politics, by default.
It is neither advisable nor a good excuse to misinterpret the two Roman maxims -- "welfare of the people is the highest law" and "safety of the state is the supreme law" abridging the democratic system, the likes of which we are not unfamiliar with.
Therefore, we expect that inter-party dissensions and political rivalries will not spill onto the streets, that the parliament will be the "battleground" of all ideas and the only forum for sorting out political and national issues. It is hoped that we have seen the end of the days of chase and counter chase on the streets between political rivals.
Perhaps the biggest lesson for us is that political reforms and reformed politics are matters that will have to be internalised by the politicians. It cannot be imposed from the top.
However, democratic institutions can create conditions that would to an extent compel the political parties to undertake party reforms. But more than that, the conscientious citizens must play a more active part in this regard
Without 1/11 we would perhaps not have had a reformed ACC. But we have also learnt that just as political reforms cannot be implemented fully overnight there is no magic wand to remove corruption instantly. But it is a lesson too that fight against corruption must not be motivated by political considerations, nor are the numbers the criterion. What was needed was making examples of a few of the congenital corrupt through producing incontrovertible evidence to convict and keep them where they deserve to be -- behind bars.
But at least the many that are undergoing trial for alleged charges of corruption, and those that have avoided arrest so far but are known to have indulged in it, will have realised that law will catch up with them eventually. Whether or not they are made to pay for their crimes will depend on how well the state presents its case. Everyone must be accorded a fair trial but it will be a pity if the real culprits get off.
At the end of the day perhaps the question that will ring louder than all the others is, have we learnt from our follies? It is said that fools never learn from their mistakes, but they do a great service to the wise who learn from the mistakes of the fools. That is why the Chinese say that a wise man will never reprove a fool. Objective evaluation of the recent past is necessary, unless we want to see ourselves cast in the category of the latter.
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