Thursday, May 7, 2009

Bipartisanship and Bangladesh's Future

Dr. Muzzaffar Ahmed Chowdhury, Professor of Political Science and Vice Chancellor of Dhaka University was also a Minister in the Cabinet of Bangobandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He had in him what makes a legend and a legend he was. In class, he used to tell us while reflecting on the politics of Pakistan that a major problem of the country was mindset of the political leaders to blame others for their faults, never accepting any on their part.

Thirty eight years after our independence, we are still caught in the same mindset that Dr. Chowdhury saw in Pakistan. As a nation, we have failed to grow out of it just as Pakistan failed till it disintegrated. The blame game has worsened. In her latest speech on May Day, our Prime Minister explicitly pointed accusing fingers at the BNP for the major crises Bangladesh is facing with electricity and water. In fact, from the very first day of assuming office, she has been harping on this theme consistently with her Ministers orchestrating this blame game with consistency and devotion. Khaleda Zia in her May Day rally a day later also proved that she is equal to her nemesis in the blame game by blaming the AL for the current problems.
The people agreed overwhelmingly with the Awami League's anti-BNP platform in the December 29th elections. In fact, they left no one in doubt on the issue by the margin with which they returned the party to power. They also voted for AL's "Vision 2021" and "Digital Bangladesh". Therefore, they expect the AL to go ahead fulfilling the promises instead of wasting time blaming the BNP over and over again. It does not serve the AL's purpose either; the time wasted in this blame game is also a waste of time for the nation. It is in fact more than a waste of time; it provokes the BNP and if history is any guide for a prediction, Bangladesh will no doubt suffer the consequences of such provocation as it can only lead to making politics volatile and un-stable.

Even in this blame game, all is not fair. When the Prime Minister blamed the BNP for the current problems of the country, she failed to consider that there was a two-year period in-between during which an emergency government led by Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed was in office. Two years is a long time in the life of a government and more so, if power generation and water distribution are the issues. The emergency government in addition had the advantage of ruling without any opposition and did not also suffer the other disadvantages that elected governments confront. Hence, while the Prime Minister may have been justified in blaming the BNP on power and water in her May Day address, she should not have left the emergency government out of the equation in the blame game. Quite predictably, Khaleda Zia's response to Sheikh Hasina was nothing new. She made a number of accusations of her own in her public rally and threatened to launch a campaign to unseat the AL Government. This can very well be a prelude to conflicts and violence to follow.
Our politicians talk of history. Yet sadly no political party or political leader takes lessons from it. Today the AL is basking and for good reasons. Yet it is forgetting that in 2001, the BNP's victory was almost equally massive in terms of the number of seats won. The BNP squandered that massive victory by turning a blind eye to their mistakes, allowing corruption and terrorism to thrive in their backyard, too busy playing the blame game.

It is still too early to predict the direction in which the AL is going. But then in the course they are taking, there is an eerie similarity with the course BNP had taken in 2001 that left many people, who voted for the party in the belief that things would change the country for the better, worried. While it is true that the BNP has just 30 seats in parliament; it is also a fact that they represent a very large section of the nation whose support for governance is vitally necessary. Going after the BNP cannot be a national agenda; it can only come in the way of the AL implementing the promises it has made to the people who are only interested in the successful implementation of these promises. They do not care now about the BNP; they care much less about what wrong they had done in politics when they were in power.

Bangladesh is the envy of the rest of South Asia for its homogeneity and egalitarian society. It does not have the deep religious, regional, ethnic and rich-poor divides that are the bane of politics in many of the South Asian countries. Yet as a nation, we are the most divisive in the region, barring Sri Lanka, for it is just not that we have divided ourselves nationally into the two mainstream political parties, these parties in turn have divided the nation by extending their all-pervasive influence into the civil bureaucracy, civil society, educational institutions, judiciary; in fact, they have not spared any branch of organized activities in this country from their race for grab. Before this elected government came to office, we had 15 years of elected rule where the BNP was in office two times and the AL, once. They made the parliament non-functional and encouraged politics to be conducted in the streets through violence and mindless conflicts. During this period, many hundreds of days were lost because of hartals that not just damaged the economy; in case of students, this resulted in loss of valuable years from their lives. In economic and social development however, we achieved significant growth despite such violence and conflicts in our politics mainly because of the pioneering role of the private sector that just goes to prove one point; if the two mainstream parties were united on national issues of development between 1991-2006 and had given the private sector the support that they so richly deserved, then the AL's Vision 2021 and Dr. Yunus's dream of a Bangladesh free of poverty would have been achieved long ago.
Political parties in opposite camps fight in all democracies. They hold conflicting views too. But on issues of national importance, political parties everywhere make their best efforts to follow a bipartisan approach. When Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee was invited to visit Pakistan by President Pervez Musharaff, he (Vajpayee) made sure that he had the Congress on board and talked to Congress Leader Sonia Gandhi to ensure that she and her party were aware of what the Prime Minister would be discussing in Pakistan.

There is no reason why Bangladesh should not become what the Prime Minister envisions. Then there is also no reason why the Prime Minister's vision would be realized. The explanation to the obvious contradiction is embedded in the fact that Bangladesh cannot achieve its potentials on entirely the Awami League way or entirely the BNP way. In a basically two-party system, no nation can develop where the party in power tries to take the country forward with total disregard for the views of the opposition. Development is a national agenda, not essentially a party one and definitely not where the parties think of politics the way they do in Bangladesh. There has to be a bipartisan approach to Bangladesh's development. There is no alternative to it.

Recently I was in Cape Town and there visited Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was held captive for 18 years of apartheid. A former inmate of the prison briefed us. We were shown the lime quarry where the prisoners worked under the sun day in and day out. Many of the prisoners were eventually blinded as a consequence of the glare of the sun in the quarry. This ex-prisoner also told us of other inhuman cruelties, a lot of which we know from books and other sources of information. Yet when apartheid was overthrown, Nelson Mandela and his colleagues forgave their former captors, all for the sake of South Africa. In Bangladesh, the reasons of the blame-game of the two mainstream parties are trivial compared to what the blacks in South Africa had gone through. Yet why cannot our politicians and political parties find it in their hearts to forget and forgive for the sake of Bangladesh?

President Obama is a phenomenon for the same reasons. He has extended his hand of friendship to his bitterest foes. He has risen over his party credentials and personal dislikes for uniting a country that his predecessor has so badly divided. It is time for our elected Prime Ministers to do the same; the AL more so for it has used Obama campaign's theme of change in the December elections. Bangladesh is not a nation of just the Awami Leaguers or just the BNP supporters; both are almost equal in numbers. Serving the interests of just one of the parties forgetting the other completely is not even common sense that dictates a bipartisanship approach on national issues. As the Awami League is now in office, it is their responsibility to take this approach for the better future of Bangladesh. In fact, there is no other approach if the issue is the future of Bangladesh.

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