Election 2008
Keeping her word
AT the moment when Sheikh Hasina, being the leader of grand electoral alliance, stands with congratulations raining down on her, I will take the opportunity to remind her of some thoughts she shared with the writer about one and a half years ago.
This is not meant to belittle the success of the landslide victory of her alliance in the parliamentary elections or to express any cynicism about the electoral pledges that she and her allies made before the elections.
This is rather a citizen's heart-felt reflection inspired by the then virtually embattled leader's seemingly well thought out observation regarding a clear line between the role of those holding the key party posts and of those running the government.
Hasina showed no ambiguity in meaning that those elected by the people to rule the country the way it is expected to be should not mix their strategies of running the country with that of running the party.
This statement is in reference to an interview of the former prime minister with The Daily Star, headlined: "Hasina wants reforms deeper than her party leaders do," which was published on June 17, 2007.
"One group of people should run the party and another set should run the government," Hasina said at a time when the country was going through an unusual political situation as many of the people's political rights remained suspended amidst the state of emergency.
The writer, who took the interview, also recalls that only a few of her party leaders used to see her and many top shots were busy passing edicts on how to reform the party to ensure democracy with an unsaid objective of weakening the party chief by curtailing her power. It would be a foolish to think that Hasina, who has led the country's biggest political party for about two and half decades, could not sense what was in the minds of such leaders. So, she retorted.
The AL president clearly said that she believed that neither the party president's post nor any other party position should be held by the same person for more than two terms. My memory does not betray me in recalling that she also said that not only should the chief of the party be barred from becoming prime minister but all central committee office bearers also should be prohibited from becoming ministers or state ministers.
"Again, if the party chief cannot become the head of the government then no onefrom a presidium member to the secretariesshould be allowed to be in the cabinet. Earlier, a similar system was there when Bangabandhu left his ministerial portfolio and got back to the general secretary's post," Hasina said during the interview.
The ex-PM had suggested that one group would run the party and the other would run the government. That is how it had been written in the party constitution. "But we had to amend the constitution as no other political party had such provisions," she pointed out.
She was also prompt in mentioning then that she had already collected constitutions of major political parties from various countries and commissioned a team to examine those and prepare a draft.
With a feeling that the AL chief would not be oblivious of her own observation while she moves to the cabinet, this write-up is just an expression of hope that the seasoned politician's wisdom would lead the course of implementation of her own observation in this regard.
Since the electoral alliance led by her party has won a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections, will she set out on the journey to bring the reform needed to transform her plans into action to materialise a truly democratic culture in her party? We have reasons to believe so, since the words came from a leader of such stature and wisdom.
The sweeping victory does not have the might to overshadow the wisdom and rationality of thinking of the seasoned politician, we firmly believe. People's experience over the years, especially in cases when the winner had an overwhelming majority, as happened in the 2001 parliamentary elections, shows that such winners cannot rise over party interest overcome by a "winner takes all" impulse. But the people of the country voted for a change from that feudal mind-set.
It is definitely beyond doubt that the people voted for the AL and its allies in Monday's election to put them in the driving seat on the voyage to a prosperous Bangladesh, but the analysts will also add that the disgust for the misrule of the BNP-led coalition government was also reflected in the election outcome.
It is clear that the people will never accept such misrule, even by the AL-led alliance government, which is going to be the strongest government, if it resorts to such actsno matter how strong the people's support was behind them during the election.
The results of parliamentary elections in the country's recent past show that people have put their weight behind the alternative big political partiesthe BNP and the ALsince 1991. If calculated this way, it may appear that the BNP has a chance to win in the next parliamentary elections.
If the AL wants to put a brake on this, which it is assumed that the party definitely does, leaders of the party must learn from history and act accordingly by changing the political culture, which the AL has already placed high in its election manifesto. People also embraced it, a sign that they want eagerly to see its implementation.
A major criticism was that the BNP-Jamaat alliance government cared little about accommodating the opposition, meaning the AL, in the parliament and in all other state affairs, and it is assumed, again, that the AL would not like to walk in the BNP-Jamaat's shoes.
We want to see that the AL, once it forms the government, will take the opposition, no matter how small, into confidence in tackling every national issue, besides ensuring their role in deciding state policy. This very attitude, which is the essence of parliamentary democracy, would make the parliament effective, which the countrymen have been waiting for long to see.
Sheikh Hasina has said many times that she is ready to sacrifice anything for the sake of the people. Having full trust in her statement, this write-up puts forward the point that she would prove her sincerity by actualising what she had said earlier regarding running the party and the government.
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