Perspectives
The AL is lurching
Joker in the pack? Photo: Munir Uz Zaman/ Driknews
THE AL is clearly in disarray and has lost its direction. Or else why should it be wooing a fiendish tinpot dictator like Ershad for reorganising an alliance called mohajote. The disturbing rumour had already been in the air, and now it has been spelt out by the man himself. He claims he was in the mohajote and is still in it. Those who favour the idea are least aware that by subsuming him in the jote the entire alliance will spread a miasma, driving people away from it. Although the storm of 1\11 blew over the AL with the same fury as that over other major political outfits, or even more, it also brought in its wake a windfall of opportunities, affording it extra political mileage over others. But it did not seem to have availed them. Finally, it has come to be equated with the much-condemned BNP and its allies. It's depressing for any well-wisher of the party. It's an enigma that, at a crucial point of time when the national election is barely two months away, Sheikh Hasina, the party chief, is abroad, undergoing medical treatment -- interspersed with transatlantic jet-travel, match-making, and attending marriages, which makes her trip look a jaunt and junket. Back home, the party is in the doldrums, awaiting her personal intervention, decision and guidance in vital national and party issues. In a highly centralised party set up, no one else seems to be empowered to act in her absence. Her party colleagues have not shown much finesse or expertise in resolving day-to-day problems facing the party. It's a pity that the committed grassroots activists are adrift aboard a rudderless ship, with their potential going totally waste. Yet the advent of 1/11 opened the door for the party's rejuvenation through suitable reforms and restructuring, as well as by jettisoning its past unwanted baggage in term of outdated ideas and petered-out persons. The AL did nothing, except wait for an opportune time. Even now, there may not be a dearth of flunkeys and falterers, as well as ticket-seekers and sloganeering supporters for this huge political outfit, the oldest and the largest in the country -- but that's not what matches the stature of the party that spearheaded the country's independence. Compared to where the AL stands today, the stature of the BNP -- universally booed even the other day -- has gone several notches up because it took the matter of its survival rather seriously after it fell from public grace while the AL tended to relax and remained complacent with the result of their pre 1/11 movements. The AL has since been in a stupor, restricting its party activities at the best to the drawing room of Ivy Concord, and has displayed little initiative and dynamism. The BNP and its alliance partners, on the other hand, created much more waves and noise, trumpeting their arrival afresh to the centre-stage of national politics. The AL's low profile has perhaps emboldened the establishment to be gradually more hostile to AL, demolishing the caretaker government's much vaunted promise to construct a "level playing field" prior to the election. Although Madam Zia is about to face another indictment over Bara Pukuria graft case, she has secured bail in all other cases against her. But Sheikh Hasina is still to obtain permanent bail in all thirteen cases pending against her to avoid fresh incarceration as and when she returns. There seems to be no serious effort even to fight for her bail. Perhaps as a result of this, a section of the media is also doubtful about her return any time soon -- whatever may be the reason. Political observers, both at home and abroad, are waiting to see how, in that case, the AL would manage its election amid the indecision and uncertainty.
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