No Nonsense
Triumph of hope and change
AWAMI League chief Sheikh Hasina's promise of change for a better Bangladesh has rekindled hopes among the impoverished masses, who gave her party 229 seats in the 300 member parliamenta surreal outcomewhich is comparable to the Democratic Party's control of both Houses of the US Congress and Barack Obama's winning the presidency.
The vanquished alliance and its leader Khaleda Zia could have graciously conceded the outcome as a surprise gesture and set a historic precedent; instead she chose to be her predictable selfpugnacious and suspectingagainst the claim by voters and international observers that it was a free and fair one. By being gracious in defeat she could have been in a position to exert a powerful leverage in the Hasina administration. By rejecting the results, she has virtually marginalised herself.
In an open and transparent election, BNP's demolitionthe tsunami of defeat with a breathtaking rejection by the peoplecouldn't have been engineered, as Khaleda claims, even by the most crooked election fixing machinery anywhere in the world.
"The process appears to have yielded a result that accurately reflects the will of Bangladeshi voters," said Constance Berry Newman, the head of a 65-people delegation from the International Republican Institute, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy.
International Herald Tribune observed: "The voting Monday, which heralded Bangladesh's return to democracy after two years of military-backed rule, was the most peaceful in decadesa stark contrast to the failed elections of 2007, which dissolved into street riots and prompted the emergency measures."
Barring some isolated incidents, the election has set the standards and challenges for all future elections in a way never seen before. The outcome was clearly written on the wall long before the first vote was cast on December 29.
The people and the media were crying out loud against misrule for five 5 years (2001-2006) -- but the alliance government ignored them. Khaleda's plea for forgiveness for all the gaffes of her 5 years of governance was "too little, too late." Now her defiance reveals that her plea for forgiveness lacked genuineness and may have simply been a gambit to gain voters' sympathy.
Whether BNP's mortifying defeat was in some way good for Khaleda and her party leaders' overblown egos can be a case study for political scientists. But for now, she and her party are poised to lose big with the dismemberment of an already fractured partyone that began nearly three years ago with the formation of LDP under the leadership Col. Oli Ahmed and then the expulsion of the reformist group.
By asking her party's winners to forsake noisy and boisterous revelry through street processions, Hasina has shown the composure and acuity expected of a leader. With her party's overwhelming victory, the burden of responsibility is also overwhelming. In order to execute those responsibilities, Hasina set in motion the process of inclusivity and responsibility sharing when she declared that her government would work with the opposition's participation.
Being the leader of such a mammoth majority, Hasina can set another precedentby passing laws to minimise the influence and interference of MPs in the affairs of the local governments.
Once AL forms the government, the fear of being unseated in the 2013 election, hopefully, will induce the practice of good governance. If BNP can successfully regroup by distancing itself from the religious extremists and suspected war criminals it will be the worthy opponent to generate that fear.
In the past, a party with absolute majority had shown intolerance of the opposition and resorted to reckless use of power by politicising the state machinery. If BNP's debilitating defeat is any lesson, then there should be zero tolerance for any repeat of the mischief of the past. With the realisation that her awe-inspiring victory has transcendental significance for the suffering masses, Hasina can achieve most of her targeted goals and thus establish herself as the worthy daughter of Bangabandhu.
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