Editorial
As the nation prepares for elections . . .
Hasina and Khaleda offered little opportunity to hold them to account on their promises
THE nation is now poised to exercise its right of franchise. On December 29, more than two years after the last elected government handed over power to a caretaker government, voters will choose for the next five years a new parliament and therefore a new administration that they expect will fulfill their most basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education. In these past couple of months, especially since the lifting of the many curbs on political activities, the parties have come forth with their manifestos outlining the programmes they will undertake and implement if they are elected to power.
While we do not deny that the campaign this year has been an especially spirited one owing to the special circumstances that conditioned politics over the last two years, we must note with regret that the degree and quality of debate, indeed the debate itself, we expected from the political parties have not been there. It was particularly from the chiefs of the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party that the nation expected more in-depth responses to the many questions that have agitated the public mind. Unfortunately, the people were not given ample opportunity to question the top leaders of the two parties, though Sheikh Hasina showed a modicum of interaction with the public through her video conferences. To be sure, a limited number of questions were put to politicians at such forums as the BBC Shonglap and on private television channels. But where the people of the country expected the two former prime ministers to face the nation through the media and address the many worries that assail the public, they kept away from taking advantage of the option before them. At one point, people expected them to face off against each other in a nationally televised debate. That too did not materialise. Both have, however, addressed mammoth public rallies and wayside public meetings as part of their election campaigns. At these rallies and in their addresses to the country over radio and television last evening, they pledged to build a prosperous Bangladesh if their parties and alliances triumph at the December 29 elections.
We recall the 1991 and 2001 pre-election periods when both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina appeared before journalists on media programmes to specifically respond to questions about their party manifestos and their own perceptions of the future. In such critical times as the present, for these pre-eminent politicians in the country to have interacted directly with the public would have given us a surer sense of where they mean to lead Bangladesh in the coming years.
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