M. Serajul Islam
The Awami League is insisting that the election must be held under an interim administration with Sheikh Hasina as the Prime Minister. The BNP is adamant that the national election must be held under the non-party Caretaker Government system. The two parties are moving further and further away on the issue of finding a way to reach an agreement on how to hold the next general election where both can participate. Meanwhile, increasingly the ability of the Awami League to agree to a national election under the CG system is going out of its hands because of simple arithmetic of electioneering. The numbers are adding up against it to make it difficult if not impossible for the Awami League to agree to hold the next national election in a manner that would allow the BNP to participate.
Take for instance, the recent press conference of the 9 women Directors of Grameen Bank held after the news came out in the media that the Government was about to break up the Noble Prize winning institution into a number of parts and bring it under its absolute control. Obviously these democratically elected Directors with links at the grass roots were upset over the Government’s attempt to break the GB. They expressed determination that they would not allow it. One of the Directors reminded the government that the GB has 8.4 million women and they all have families. They warned that unless the government changes its decision GB members and their families would vote against them in the forthcoming national election.
However, the GB subscribers are not the only people unhappy with the ruling party. The supporters of the Hefazatul Islam are also are unhappy with the AL.
Newspapers reported that the Hefazat had brought 1.5 million people to Dhaka on April 4 and May 5 and that too after the Government had made all out efforts to prevent Hefazat supporters from coming to Dhaka. The Government had stopped buses, trains and launches to discourage them.
The Hefazat supporters are Islamic fundamentalists. Unlike the Jamaat however, the Hefazatul Islam is not a political party involved in politics. In the past, many of them have never bothered to vote in any election, be it national or local. That situation has changed. The non-political Hefazatul Islam has been brought to the centre of national politics, first, by the anti-Islamic activities of some of the youth leaders of the Shahabag movement and later by the way they were treated by the law enforcing forces to disperse them from the Shapla Chattar on the night of May 5-6. The Hefazat believes that a large number of their supporters were killed by the law enforcing agencies at the Shapla Chattar on the night of May 5-6 which the government denies. A government press note issued several days after the incident stated that some Hefazat men were killed that night.
Unresolved problem
Although the Government has won the first round by successfully dispersing the serious threat that the Hefazat had posed on May 5-6, the problem has not been resolved at all to the benefit of the ruling party. The action by the law enforcing agencies has turned a large section of the people into anti AL voters, who would normally not have voted for they do not support any of the mainstream parties. It now seems that in the next national election, the Hefazat supporters would not just vote but vote with a vengeance against the ruling party. They showed this mood in the 4 city corporation elections which the ruling party supported candidates lost to the BNP supported candidates by big margins. The ruling party, setting its commitment to secularism and use of religion in politics by the way side, openly and unabashedly flirted with not just Hefazat but also fundamentalist forces to secure votes. (In the ensuing Gazipur election, the ruling party backed candidate “proudly” moved around with bearded and capped supporters to give voters the impression that the Hefazat and Islamic fundamentalists elements were backing him!!)
Earlier, the ruling party messed up its electoral fortunes by the insensitive way it handled the share market scam. After it came to power, it allowed the share market to be a place for the fortune hunters. Huge number of people of all political affiliations and non-party elements were drawn to the share market. They included a good number of the first-time voters who had been instrumental in bringing the AL to office lured by the party’s promise of change. They all became victims of the share market scam through which few people with close connection to the ruling party skimmed thousands of crores of Takas and not one of them has either been apprehended or punished. The government, instead of sympathizing with the victims, many of whom lost all the money they had, was totally insensitive to their predicament and senior Minister made fun of their plight! According to political analysts, the number of victims of the share market scam and their families would be in many millions who would have every reason to be upset with the ruling party.
The AL for reasons that only it can explain has given this huge number of voters every reason to vote against it in a national election. If the votes of these groups are added to those of the BNP in case it participates in the national election, then by the simplest of arithmetic the chances of the ruling party of returning to power would vanish. That is only a part of the AL’s concerns. The issues Stacked against the AL in the next general election include the alleged corruption over the Padma Bridge; the Hallmark and the Destiny scams through which few politically connected individuals have defrauded public financial institutions of thousands of crores of Takas; corruption by the political leadership; unacceptable law and order condition and hike of price of essentials in the country and misdeeds of the ruling party-affiliated front organizations including the Chatra League.
Thus the AL, because of the factors noted, has little incentive to accede to the demand of the BNP for the Caretaker Government. In the last five years, it has treated the BNP leaders in a manner no opposition party has ever been treated in Bangladesh. They have been harassed and persecuted on the flimsiest of grounds; some of the BNP leaders have been placed on remand, treated like common criminals and subjected to torture. The AL thus cannot even think of the consequences it would face if it lost power to the BNP.
The way out
Nevertheless, there has to be a way out because the AL cannot hope to hold an election without the BNP to return to power and remain there. The forces against it would be too formidable to suppress by use of force. Again, arithmetic will stand against the AL’s chances of succeeding in remaining in power should it decide to go ahead with next national election by keeping the BNP/Jamaat out of the race. It is true that public reaction was against the attempt by the BNP and the Jamaat to bring down the present AL led government by hartal and violence. The people did not support that because they felt that they had elected the AL to power and therefore they saw no reason to force it out of power before it completed its term.
That public support is likely to vanish once the AL is back in power without the opposition’s participation. In that even BNP/ Jamaat would begin a movement against the AL government and in all likelihood the public reaction to such a movement will not be negative because the government will not have the legitimacy.
It is not simple arithmetic that should bring the AL to its senses; it should also see the way its own supporters in the media and the civil society are trying their best to bring it to face reality. A leading daily generally critical of the opposition recently conducted an opinion poll that showed 90% of the people supported the CG system. A columnist known for his pro-ruling party sympathies has recently wrote in the same paper strongly suggesting the AL to accept the CG system and added that it will need the system badly when it faces the BNP as the ruling party in the election after the next one which he thinks BNP will win. An English-language daily that has consistently flogged the opposition has written an unusually hard hitting editorial column about the AL that it should read to get a hold on reality.
No election is won or lost till the final results are announced. Thus despite the reality of arithmetic that points against an AL win in an “inclusive” national election, the ruling party can still make a fight if it reads the writings on the wall and takes lessons from its mistakes in the months remaining till the national election. The AL should consider that the BNP has done little meantime to advance towards a winning position and the chances that arithmetic is giving it of winning are all due to its own mistakes. Towards giving it a chance of winning the next election, the first step that the AL should take is to start talking with the BNP so that it can give the country a national election that would enable all parties to participate. This is also the responsibility of the ruling party from which it cannot shy away by being in the government.
An ‘inclusive’ election
If the AL moves towards ensuring an “inclusive” national election, then the compulsions of arithmetic that currently appear to be stacked against it for the next general election could level out substantially. The fear and suspicion in the public mind that the AL may be conspiring to return to power without having to fight the BNP will vanish and the people would then be able to make a choice between the two mainstream parties. Anything to the contrary would push the country towards civil strife that many fears could even turn into a civil war and the consequences of that would be dangerous and disastrous for all. If the country deteriorates towards that, the responsibility for pushing the country there would rest on the shoulder of the ruling party for restricting the people’s choice in exercising their sovereign right to vote and elect their government of choice.
[The writer is a retired career Ambassador]
Source: Weekly Holiday
