Ground Realities
Of moral governance and predatory politics
The bone of contention?Photo: AFP
POLITICS appears to be turning towards the hypocritical, while we thought it was the art of the possible. You only have to watch Begum Zia haranguing the country on the immense darkness that will surely descend on the country should the Awami League triumph at the general elections. The people will not accept, she tells, a puppet government the caretaker administration and the Election Commission might be planning to foist on us after the elections. She does not explain, but everyone knows where she is pointing. But men have been going around whispering in our ears the sordid truth: that a victory for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party will mean a credible voting process but one for the Awami League will certainly be the outcome of an engineered exercise of the franchise. And that is not the end of hypocrisy. These days, there are people ready to impress upon you the grave truth of the damage Sheikh Hasina has done to herself by taking Ershad on board. She has befriended autocracy, these BNP-leaning men will inform you, with that sure glint in their eyes. You feel crestfallen, until you remember that the Begum has herself been poaching quite a few of the smaller autocrats who once glowed in the light of the bigger one. Before the imposition of the state of emergency, Khaleda Zia welcomed into her party Shah Moazzam Hossain and Syeda Razia Faiz, both of whom had long been Ershad loyalists. What would the BNP say if these two individuals had gone over to the Awami League? Drop the question. And focus on another. Not very long ago, Ershad linked up with the Begum and was spotted sitting at her feet at a public rally. No one said a word at the time about the BNP's developing relations with autocracy. Not a whisper was heard about the old bitterness between the two sides. In the aftermath of Ershad's fall from power, Moudud Ahmed, a Zia loyalist before serving the dictator as minister, deputy prime minister, prime minister and vice-president, went back to the BNP and ended up being law minister. No one in the party that Ziaur Rahman cobbled into shape in 1979 had any qualms about welcoming a man who had been a spokesman for autocracy for years on end. Mahmudul Hasan, another soldier known for his links to Ershad, was warmly welcomed into their fold by the BNP. Begum Zia did not seem to recall that Hasan had once represented a regime determined to smash her party into pieces. The legacy and memory of autocratic rule conveniently went missing. But that is what politics has been all about in this country. Ethics have not mattered, principles have been dumped overboard. BNP men will tell you about the many moments in which the Awami League has committed nefarious deeds in its pursuit of power. In 1986, the party legitimised the Ershad regime, these men will inform you in blazing anger. Today, it is conspiring to go back to power on the back of the old autocrat and the caretaker government. And, of course, there have always been the charges and accusations pertaining to the Awami League's being in cahoots with the Indians. Forgotten is the BNP's marriage of convenience with the Jamaat-e-Islami, its careful looking away from the war crimes of the men it welcomed into government in October 2001. And here you have a curious malady, for these Awami League baiters: while they see nothing wrong in being in bed with those who helped Pakistan to rape and murder their fellow Bengalis, they seriously believe that the new-found camaraderie between Sheikh Hasina and Ershad is a deadly sin even the gods blush thinking of. Begum Zia has been questioning the motives of the Election Commission every step of the way. Conspiracy theories now form the base of the politics her party pursues at this point. And such theories have a certain force in galvanising the faithful. But how many of the admirers remember the sheer scandal that the Election Commission dwindled into under Justice M.A. Aziz? And why must Begum Zia and her acolytes forget the shame that was the Magura by-election in 1994, a disaster that left us all unable to go for a change of government without the interregnum of a caretaker administration? Begum Zia now asks us to vote for her and save Islam. That was what the Pakistanis used to say, before we ran them out of town in 1971. On December 29, we face a stark choice. We elect a new, morality-driven government. Or we revert to the predatory politics that left our lives a shambles more than two years ago.
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