Published in The New Age September 14, 2006
Could a hung parliament resolve politics of confrontation?
As the next election nears, the politicians are getting more confrontational although the public have had enough of that. It is therefore likely that the people could use the next elections to make the politicians heed to their disappointment and frustrations. They could use their voting power to impose sense upon the insensitive politicians of the BNP and the AL by giving neither enough seats to form the government, writes M Serajul Islam
As the Muslims of pre-1947 Bengal, we were the force behind the partition of India that created Pakistan. As East Pakistanis, we fought one of the most glorious wars of liberation of the last century and created Bangladesh. In the 1980s, we struggled successfully against military dictatorship and established democracy in the country. We had three peaceful changes of government through elections since then where twice, in 1996 and 2001, the incumbent governments were voted out. Yet, after struggling for close to a century for establishing democracy and people's rights, our politicians are still in same confrontational mood as if we have not moved one step in the right direction in achieving people's rights. Is this rational?
Like any developing country, Bangladesh's politics is not perfect. The government speaks of the people and their rights but often acts in reverse. Hence, there is a good reason for the politicians in opposition to demand, at times demonstrate and in extreme cases, fight in the streets for some of these rights. Such imperfection in politics overshadows the smooth functioning of government in most developing societies. Bangladesh is no exception. However, the comparison between Bangladesh and other developing countries ends there, and we differ with other developing countries in a number of unique ways. First, there is no nation on earth that has such a prolonged history of agitation against authority as if Bangladesh and agitation against authority have become synonymous. Second, we are the only nation on earth where the opposition has agitated against both the dictatorial and the democratic government with equal enthusiasm and energy. Finally, our politics is also unique because those in opposition have done exactly what they have accused the government of doing when they themselves were in power.
We will soon have another general election to be held under a neutral caretaker government. On three previous occasions, elections were held and power was transferred peacefully and on each occasion, the parliament has completed full term. This time, the elections will be held when Bangladesh has had a period of sound economic growth that has led Goldman and Sachs to identify Bangladesh as one of the 11 developing nations to watch in the next few years. Yet, among the politicians, the conflict has reached a new dimension where many abroad are saying Bangladesh is close to being a failed state. In the country, many people are apprehensive whether the elections will be held on schedule because of the intensification of the politics of confrontation.
Historically, our prolonged tryst with confrontational politics has one good explanation. Bangladesh is perhaps the only country that had to de-colonise twice in the span of 25 years. In the struggle for independence from British, the province of Bengal was at the forefront of both constitutional and confrontational politics. It used to be said then that what 'Bengal thinks today, the rest of India thinks tomorrow'. Legends like Titu Mir and Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, revolutionaries like Surja Sen and Pritilata Waddar were from Bengal. When the politics of British India took a religious turn, the Bengali Muslims led by legendary leaders like AK Fazlul Huq and Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy showed the Muslims of the rest of India the way to achieve Pakistan. However, when they found that they had been betrayed and had instead stepped from one colonial domination to another by creating Pakistan, their free spirit did not take long to stand against Pakistan's oppressive rule, often against military dictators in which they were led brilliantly by Sheikh Mujib and a host of other leaders including Maulana Bhasani. The most glorious manifestation of that liberal spirit was shown when we won our liberation war after 9 months of struggle in 1971.
The achievements of the politicians and the people that culminated with the emergence of Bangladesh should have ended our confrontational politics to reap the harvests of our long struggle for a better quality of life and freedom from all forms of oppression. Unfortunately, that did not happen for soon after liberation, Bangladesh went back to the same confrontational politics, like our colonial days were yet to be over. The AL's move towards one-party rule through BAKSAL was then a genuine reason for the opposition for confrontation. Earlier, in 1973, the Awami League had rigged the elections so extensively that one Western Ambassador had privately commented that Bangladeshis should kneel down in prayer for their future.
For a brief period when Justice Sayem was the president and chief martial law administrator, there was no agitation or movement against the government. Once power passed to general Zia and he turned into a politician, the movement started again against the government. After Zia was assassinated in 1981, there was a brief rule by president Sattar who was removed in a bloodless military coup by general Ershad that brought the country under a long period of military dictatorship. In the ten years of his military dictatorship, the political leadership led by Khaleda Zia, heading the BNP, and Sheikh Hasina, heading the Awami League, agitated against military rule in which the people whole-heartedly supported the politicians. The spirit among the people, though qualitatively different from their spirit during the war of liberation, was against a government that had usurped people's power that was anathema to the spirit that motivated them to fight for independence.
The downfall of Ershad should have removed from our politics for good the confrontation between the government and the opposition political parties except what is normal for any country trying to establish democracy. Unfortunately this did not happen and people's hopes that were raised in 1971 to be dashed by AL attempts to move Bangladesh towards one-party dictatorship under BAKSAL were again dashed because this time the Awami League did not take its defeat in the 1991 elections gracefully and instead accused the BNP of coming to power by fraudulent means. For the entire tenure of BNP's first term, the Awami League made governance difficult for the BNP and life intolerable for the public. The public, who had supported strategies like hartal and other uses of conformational politics under Ershad, saw no reason for these strategies under a democratic government no matter how seriously the latter failed in governance. The AL walked out of parliament and took politics to the streets as if the BNP government was qualitatively no better than Ershad's military dictatorship. When the BNP was voted to the opposition, they accepted the same style of politics against an elected government and continued the politics of confrontation, using hartals and boycott of parliament the same way as the AL. As a consequence, the senseless politics of confrontation became the accepted norm. The worst manifestation of this negative politics can be seen in the hatred that Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia have for each other where Hasina cannot even pronounce the name of Khaleda Zia without showing contempt that is absurd and unhealthy for our politics or for that matter any civilised politics anywhere.
When governments of the past usurped power, the people whole heartedly supported the agitation of the political parties against these governments. When opposition political parties continued with this against elected governments, the people silently suffered but did not support these agitations or movements although the parties carried out their confrontation in their name with their hired goons. In the current context, the public feels that AL's demands for reforms of the electoral process that they could have themselves resolved when in power, can still be settled and should be through negotiations under the caretaker government. Today, almost everybody agrees that hartal is not a democratic strategy against an elected government. Almost everybody likewise feels that hartal achieves nothing for the people, increases their miseries, and makes governance difficult. Opinion is unanimous among the people that even if the right to call hartal can be accepted, attempts to enforce hartals by force and punish those who oppose it is fascism that should be banned for good from Bangladesh's politics. The sufferings from hartal were brought home last July when as a result of AL's call for 72 hours' hartal many students lost a year as they could not sit for their A and O level exams. In my years on tour of duty as an Ambassador, use of hartal was one issue in our politics that I could never defend without rendering myself silly. I had little problem explaining concerns about Islamic militancy, or allegations of communalism, etc. It was always the permanent state of confrontation, often on issues too silly to explain rationally, that made me defensive and embarrassed me before my hosts.
The politicians are indulging in the politics of confrontation because of their zero-sum mentality manifested in total lack of accommodation for each other's views, where they do not even have a single national agenda upon which to accommodate or cooperate. Their impatience to push the elected government out of office after losing an election is indeed strange and unreasonable. Moreover, they never succeed in shortening the tenure of an elected government by such means even by a day but succeed incredibly well in harming individual as well as national interests. In their parochial mentality and very narrow self interests, they do not take heed of the wisdom of the people of Bangladesh who have never failed to demonstrate when allowed to use their voting power in voting out an inefficient and corrupt Government. In 1991, after Ershad fell, political analysts gave the BNP no chance against the AL because of the latter's organisation that extended up to the grassroots level. The people, keeping in mind their sufferings under the first AL rule and Khaleda Zia's uncompromising stand against Ershad while Sheikh Hasina had at least once compromised with the dictator by participating in the 1986 elections, voted the BNP to power. When the BNP failed in governance, they voted the AL to office, influenced additionally by Sheikh Hasina's publicly sought apology for people's sufferings during their first term in office. When the AL failed to deliver and backtracked on election promises and was found soft on terror, the people voted Khaleda Zia back to office. Thus the people of Bangladesh have never failed to correctly choose between the parties keeping the country's interests in view. Therefore, all the confrontation that opposition parties have indulged against the government, which has rendered the country's economy near death-blows and its image almost brain-damage, have been un-necessary because the agitations have never achieved the desired results while the people never failed to vote inefficient governments out of office through elections.
Anybody looking back into the last 15 years of Bangladesh's politics would see, with a little bit of objectivity, that the charges that the AL and BNP have brought against each other as an opposition party are identical almost to the details. As opposition, each accused the other of misrule, corruption, favouritism, politicisation of the administration, political oppression, etc. In government, both have acted strangely but certainly in the same way, in a state of denial to opposition's accusations, provocative rather than accommodative to their demands and actively helped sharpen government-opposition confrontation. To heighten the agitation and confrontation, they have brought issues of history, patriotism, and role of individuals in our independence movement by placing respected and revered leaders of our country into contrasting and conflicting roles to further damage the politics of the country. While the people have interest in all these issues, they do not believe that any of the issues upon which the two parties have built the disastrous politics of confrontation is serious enough to fight in the streets or use suicidal strategies like hartal that end up causing the people and the country unimaginable hardships and damages. Everybody now knows the financial losses to the country from a day's hartal which is enormous and both the BNP and AL have imposed thousands of days of such madness upon the country. Everybody also knows hartals have not had any effect, nor should it have, upon democratically elected governments in pushing them out of office. Both have a lot of explanation therefore to do for the damages their selfish and insensitive politics have done to Bangladesh.
As the next election nears, the politicians are getting more confrontational although the public have had enough of that. It is therefore likely that the people could use the next elections to make the politicians heed to their disappointment and frustrations. They could use their voting power to impose sense upon the insensitive politicians of the BNP and the AL by giving neither enough seats to form the government. They could very likely hang the next Parliament. Bangladesh has come a long way, seeing through two colonial rules, political assassinations and military dictatorships to allow the self-centred politicians lead the country towards a failed state when we have been identified based on our sound achievements in the economic and social sectors of growth as a country with a future. Notwithstanding the politicians' seeming ability to play with our future, thanks to the system of caretaker government, there comes a time every five years when neither of the major parties looks that strong before the voters. It is surprising how Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina can overlook this for both have seen this power of the people, Khaleda in 1996 and Hasina in 2001. In serving notice upon each separately in the past, the voters now know they have failed in what they wanted, namely from one elected, a honest and sincere administration based on their election promises and from the other, a responsible opposition working within the parliament to make the government accountable. Unfortunately, upon getting elected, the one that assumed power became almost dictatorial, and the other voted to opposition became anarchist. It is time for the voters to deal with both, for the fight is still between the BNP and the AL. The voters, without any favourite this time between the two because of their politics of confrontation, may make both sweat by giving neither a majority so that whichever forms the next government will have to do so with a coalition partner (outside their pre- election alliances), lead a weak government and hence will not have the luxury of governing by whims. The one in opposition will always have the sniff of power without having to wait the long five years after losing an election knowing that the weak government could fall from inside the parliament rather than agitating in the streets to make it fall. The only uncertain element in this scenario is the absence of a third force but the way the politics is evolving, the third force could come from the Bikolpo Dhara, Ershad and/or break-away factions of the BNP which seems almost ready to break off in the seams as a result of the conflict between the younger, impatient elements in the party and the older generation of leaders.
The writer is a former ambassador of Bangladesh to Japan
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