Going Deeper
Change at the top
AWAMI League-led mahajote's stunning victory in the general election reflects several changes from the past elections held in Bangladesh. For the first time, female voters outnumbered male voters, and the number of female candidates who won was higher than ever before. For the first time, more than one-third were first-time voters. Despite BNP's allegations of irregularities in 72 constituencies, no law and order incident was reported.
The European Union Election Observer Mission opined that, apart from minor technical difficulties, professionalism, transparency and credibility were "the hall marks" of the election. The Commonwealth Observers Team found no evidence of "election engineering." NDI felt that the electoral process met international standard and advised all political parties to abandon the dysfunctional practices of the past.
All foreign observers advised the defeated BNP-Jamaat alliance to accept the peoples' verdict and to behave constructively as opposition parties. Prime minister-designate Sheikh Hasina pledged that there would be no tyranny of the majority, and they would present a new political culture to the nation by abjuring politics of vengeance and confrontation.
Her instruction to party leaders and workers not to bring out victory processions lest they lead to fracas between the victors and the vanquished was reflective of her good judgment and magnanimity. It was also a stark contrast to the 2001 election victory of BNP that let loose unspeakable atrocities on the opposition supporters and the minority community who, BNP believed, had voted for Awami League.
According to preliminary findings, Awami League's vote went up by 25% while BNP's vote went down by 20% compared to the votes the parties polled in 2001. One of the reasons for this is BNP's alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, the Islamist political party that till recently had not accepted the existence of Bangladesh and does not accept Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as the Father of the Nation.
The incessant advocacy by the civil society, the freedom fighters and the Sector Commanders' Forum for the trial of those accused of collaborating with the Pakistan army in 1971 and of acts against humanity struck a cord with the voters who want these people to face trial for their misdeeds. Harvard Professor Daniel Bell, in his End of Ideology wrote: "The ideologist --communist, existentialist, religionist -- wants to live at some extreme, and criticises the ordinary man for failing to live at the level of grandeur. One can try to do so if there is the genuine possibility that the next moment could be, actually, a 'transforming moment' when salvation or revolution or genuine passion could be achieved.
Max Weber in a poignant essay, entitled "Politics as a Vocation," posed the problem as one of accepting the "ethics of responsibility" or the "ethics of ultimate ends." For the latter -- the "true believer" -- all sacrifices, all means, are acceptable for the achievement of one's belief. But for those who take on responsibility, who forgo the sin of pride, of assuming they know how life should be ordered or how the blueprint of the new society should read, one's role can be only to reject all absolutes and accept pragmatic compromise.
For the collaborators, transitional justice awaits. The concept has been defined as "a field of activity and enquiry focused on how societies address legacies of past human rights abuses, mass atrocity, or other forms of severe social trauma including genocide or civil war, in order to build a more democratic, just and peaceful future."
Sheikh Hasina is pledge bound to try war criminals. It is unlikely that the demand for their trial, now transformed into a national demand, can be side-stepped by her administration. One could also visualise a situation where a religion-based political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, can be banned because Bangladesh is a multi-religious country and religion-based political parties are known to thrive on hatred of other religionists.
If they can be put out of business for good then the curse of transnational Islamic extremism that assails South Asia, among others, can be tackled successfully. The fear of some that banning religion-based parties will only drive them underground is not a sustainable argument as the recent election has shown Jamaat won only two seats, in place of seventeen in 2001.
There are many other causes for BNP's defeat, massive corruption and total mal-governance being among them. Sheikh Hasina has detailed many of the tasks her government will undertake on immediate basis. We hope all will extend cooperation in winning the battle against poverty and attaining her 2021 vision for Bangladesh.
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