I have watched BTV's live coverage of proceedings of the Parliament in recent evenings after the BNP returned to Parliament. I wished that BTV had better sense of not casting these proceedings live. The references made to living and dead political leaders held by the people in the highest esteem were detestable to say the least. To say that such language has been unparliamentarily would be giving dignity to such an expression. What was amazing and shocking was to watch such remarks applauded by members of the respective parties by banging hands on the table in front of them, and making encouraging gestures to urge the speakers to put more venom into what they were saying. The way the speakers expressed critical remarks about President Ziaur Rahman and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were indeed very sad and depressing. The Speaker, a gentleman and a good Speaker at that, was at a loss trying his best to bring proceedings under control.
Our politicians, when they have opportunity to speak publicly, and now that there is no emergency, they have plenty of it, say all the good things. They talk of the spirit of liberation, of sacrifices of the language martyrs, of those who laid down their lives for the country, of patriotism, of democracy, etc. etc. that would make one new to the affairs of Bangladesh, conclude that our country is perhaps the best nation on earth for democracy to grow and flower. So far the people are concerned; this is indeed the best nation on earth for democracy to be show cased. Our people have made the greatest sacrifices for democracy and freedom. Yet, after so many decades of such sacrifices, we are today as far away from achieving democracy as the day we started our journey. The words, the language and the manner in which the Parliamentarians hurled accusations at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and President Ziaur Rahman, with abuses at the Leader of the Opposition that was shown to the nation live on BTV just reiterated the fact. Democracy cannot be achieved when our political leadership behaves this way.
There are many who would say that our journey has not been long enough. They would like to give the politicians the benefit of doubt, arguing that our march towards democracy has been now and then interrupted by military interventions and un-democratic disruptions. I am not so sure I follow their argument because even counting the interruptions; we have nearly had two decades where the military and un-democratic elements had no say in exercise of political power. In those nearly two decades, what have we achieved? It is time now to seriously look into what we have because this issue is crucial to us as a nation in the time ahead.
In between the three parliaments, the 6th, 7th and 8th, there have been 15 years when the politicians cannot say that there has been any extra-constitutional threat to the march of democracy in Bangladesh. In these 15 years, the politicians have fought one another thus hindering the strengthening of the institutions upon which a country depends to achieve a democratic system of government and society. From the 6th Parliament, the AL stayed out for most of the time. From the 7th, the BNP did the same. In the 8th, it was the Awami League again that stayed out. In the present Parliament, the BNP is playing the same game again. The issues that the two mainstream parties have used to stay out of the Parliament are issues that cannot ever be fulfilled to the satisfaction of an opposition to encourage it to enter the Parliament. The issues relate to the nature of the election; the environment in the Parliament; harassment of those who lose the election, etc. When the opposition has made these arguments to stay out of the Parliament, it has not always been that their reasons were unreasonable. There have been flaws in the elections. The party in power has also made the Parliament a forum for themselves and has seldom given the opposition the opportunity to speak. Finally, the party that won has also harassed, attacked, litigated and created all sorts of problems for the opposition.
In the midst of all these, a "convention" has been established in our politics. It is now an acknowledged behavior for a political party that wins the election to make the government subservient to it, a legacy borrowed from communism where the party is the only political institution, where all other institutions draw their power from it, the government included. In communism, the communist party does not have any opposition because it cannot. Hence in such a system, that is now almost history, opposing the party is opposing the government and country and thus an act of treason. In Bangladesh, unfortunately, the ruling party simply does not believe that there can be any opposition to its views, neither in the country nor by extension of that convoluted logic, in the parliament. Under the "convention", it is not acceptable for the opposition to oppose the ruling party but as Bangladesh is constitutionally democratic, opposition political party/s cannot be banned as it can be in a communist country. The "convention" does not however allow the opposition political party/s to play their legitimate role as a watchdog of parliamentary democracy. As a consequence, in the rare occasions they attend the Parliament, they behave in the manner that we witnessed on recent BTV coverage, behaviour that has been encouraged and provoked by the ruling party. The "convention" eventually encourages the opposition to take their politics to the streets with great harm to our economic development. We may see this happening very soon again.
The issue in Bangladesh's politics therefore is the fact that while we say we are democratic; our political party in power behaves no different from a party in the communist system. In this behaviour, there is no difference between the two mainstream political parties, the Awami League and the BNP. In power, both have acted, the same way and the AL is continuing with this tradition. In opposition, both have accepted the fact that under the "convention" that they have established as partners, neither visualizes any democratic role for the opposition.
The two mainstream parties under the "convention" have instead helped establish an anarchic and confrontational role for the opposition, mainly outside the Parliament. The AL has played this role twice and it is now the BNP's turn to play the same role second time around which is not to help establish democracy but to capture power so that they can govern the country as a ruling party. This "convention" is thus firmly straddled on a zero-sum game in the context of political power sharing.
Thus although our political parties have been carrying for the people, the movement for establishing democracy, we are getting nowhere near the goal. In fact, we are taking one step forward and two steps backward. The "convention" that our two mainstream parties has established has also worked against strengthening another institution that is absolutely vital for a functioning democracy, the civil bureaucracy. When a party comes to office, it ensures that the civil bureaucracy that in a democracy is mandatorily required to stay above the interests of a political party, is also subservient to the interests of the party that rules. On this point, the AL is now set to turn this aspect of the convention into a formal arrangement.
Bangladesh's misfortune is that it has two mainstream parties that divide the country between themselves almost half and half. The fact that the AL has won the election with a 3/4th majority this time as the BNP had won in 2002 with a 2/3rd majority does not affect this almost a natural divide. Yet in power, neither mainstream party accepts this fact. They believe when in power, they can do whatever they think is right for the country. They literally make the government and the country their own and are not willing to accept an opposing view. Giving the parties a huge mandate is in fact a mandate to them to be more arbitrary and to disregard the opposition party more.
The parliament proceedings with which I started this piece reflect the summation of the unfortunate "convention" that the two political parties have established in our politics. Therefore, if there are optimists who still hope that we would have a Parliament where the party in power and the party in opposition would work together as they do in all parliamentary democracies, both matured and immature, then I am afraid those individuals would have to wait a life time. In this, it is not the AL or the BNP that is alone the problem; they are together the problem because they do not have in themselves the first and only imperative for establishing a democratic system, namely tolerance.
That is not the end of the frustration. Watching our parliamentarians speak during the rare occasions we see the opposition in the Parliament, one would have to give up even feeling frustrated because even in frustration, there is somewhere in the back of the mind a hope that something good would emerge, somehow. Our parliamentarians have taken away even that hope as we continue what seems like an endless journey to establish democracy in Bangladesh.
Published in The Daily Independent, February 18, 2010
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