Consequences of not having an intending civil society

In the July 10 Dhaka Tribune opinion piece titled “The law of unintended consequences,” Zafar Sobhan made willful predictions about the consequences of a diminishing BNP.

I would like to humbly disagree with the reasons identified by Sobhan. It is unexplainable how legal cases against a handful of leaders reduces BNP to non-existence. A healthy organisation should have an in-built, self-healing system, allowing the emergence of new leadership in such a crisis. This is the very essence of organisational culture.

It is not the prosecution, but the ill-thought policies tantamount to terrorism, leadership flaws, and organisational weaknesses that may render BNP nonexistent. The government should remain agnostic of the disaster-management capacity of an organisation and follow the law when it comes to corruption and terrorism.

BNP needs to take into account that the AL has faced more adverse situations before, including pre-liberation Bangladesh. It is our responsibility to keep the government under pressure to ensure justice is served for the 300+ arson murders in the name of politics.

We have to ensure the accountability of the opposition too, both in and outside the parliament. It needs to be made clear to the BNP that criminals are not welcome in politics. They cannot evade perpetrators of arson attacks being brought to justice. The media can play an important role in calling upon BNP to shun negative politics and adopt corrective measures for reform. There is no alternative to starting to reconnect with the people. A political party should not boycott elections. That subverts the very notion of a democratic process.

We need to give attention to the democratic process too. The show must go on and the parties need to catch up, not the other way round. This may also pave the way for fresh ideas, and new organisations may emerge.

As citizens, we should not expect the elections to be as dramatised as soap operas. The election needs to be seen as a means to an end rather than the end itself. The focus should be on the agenda being pursued rather than who is participating. The ideas should matter more than the identities.

If civil society does not raise these questions, BNP may cease to exist, but the problem of our politics will not vanish. We need an environment in which political parties continue to improve their organisational capability and communicative pro-people politics. The question of how to develop a political culture which centres more around resilient organisational systems instead of individual personalities is a bigger problem.

In the article, Sobhan does not clearly define the “BNP problem.” The AL will not necessarily see BNP as a problem if the latter’s popular footprint in the election diminishes significantly. Why would the AL want to wipe off a diminished and weak BNP?

In recent years, AL has formed governments a number of times but it has never attempted to wipe off the Muslim League. It may be mentioned here that, despite the waves of BNP-Jamaat “insurgency” in Sobhan’s words, the government has not banned them. If there were similar terrorist activities in other countries, the parties responsible would be immediately banned.

The “BNP problem” can be defined more deeply. Their constitution contradicts at least one major pillar of the constitution of 1972: Secularism. BNP believes in the supremacy of a single religion over others in politics. Does our civil society even see it as a problem?

Depending on the definition of the problem, there needs to be a solution. If we believe in the four principles (ie secularity, nationalism, democracy, and socialism), every political party should recognise and practice them. They may differ on how the country should run, not on why the nation was founded.

If an organisation doesn’t believe in them, they should not be allowed to participate in the elections. This was so from the very beginning until Bangabandhu was murdered. Is our civil society ready to stand up for our founding values?

What happens if the BNP is wiped off or becomes insignificant like the Muslim League?

It depends on how our society is cultivated to fill up the vacuum. Sobhan predicts that a more hardcore right-wing party will appear to take BNP’s place.

Sobhan does not say how soon this is going to happen. The article also does not explain how hardcore that organisation might be. We already have Jamaat-e-Islami, Olama League (an AL affiliate), Muslim League, etc — none of which has been criminalised yet.

We have also had JMB, ABT, Hizb ut-Tahrir etc, which are now banned. None of these parties has been able to secure the amount of votes comparable to that of BNP. There is no reason to believe they can do that in the future.

Our people have never subscribed to the idea of religious supremacy in politics. There are sporadic pockets of extremism, but they will never become a decisive factor. On the contrary, voters have considered the elections as opportunities to vent anti-incumbency frustrations on the party in power by alternating them.

Even that is changing. As the communication between the government and citizenry improves amidst new and more frequent channels (check out the Facebook page of the foreign state minister), the election may not be the only way to vent disappointment.

The BNP has failed because the anti-incumbency mindset is, in fact, changing in favour of peace, stability, and continuity that can bring development.

A more hardcore right-wing party surely cannot secure close to 10% of the popular votes in the 2019 election, let alone replace BNP’s core share of 30%. There is no sign of a more organised effort of crystallising hardcore politics.

Let me speculate what may happen then. Given that religion had never been the trump card in the elections and the role of the anti-incumbency mindset is changing, I think the AL MPs will face greater scrutiny from within the party. They will have competitors who will try to capitalise on the frustration of the voters and challenge the official candidates.

Our law does not allow a person to contest independently after he or she buys the nomination from the party. This might be a blessing in disguise. People may think about contesting independently from the very beginning. Over the years, a group of AL members may secede and start a new party (or something similar might happen in the BNP too). The new organisations will capitalise on people’s support for the pillars of the 1972 constitution, the same people who have been casting their votes for AL, as they are the only option. As a result, we will see new secular organisations attracting angry voters.

That is not unprecedented. Check the history of the AL.

As citizens, if we create the environment of granular criticism, it will be easier for everyone to compare the politicians at the level of individual performances, especially of respective MPs, and think about possible alternatives at the same level.

It is a tall order. Years of depoliticisation and criminalisation of politics have given birth to a “I-hate-politics” culture. It is time to start a “take-back-my-politics” and “take-care-of-our-future” campaign to counter it. Civil society should take a clear stance with regards to what kind of ideology is welcome and what isn’t in politics.

I disagree with Sobhan’s predictions in the short-term and medium-term, but yes, we may face such possibilities in the distant future. It should take generations of failure from our side. If we skip asking the fundamental and existential political questions, like we are doing now, organisations with misguided philosophies may gain enough momentum in politics.

We should also ask the politicians about their interpretation of the organisational ideologies and practices for future leadership development. News reports from the early 70s have witnessed Bangabandhu, Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmed etc elaborating their interpretations of the four principles. I wish the journalists of our time would have asked our present leaders the same.

The future is never automatically bright. So our political future can roll into a dark age if we do not break the culture of not questioning the political leaders’ fundamental and existential questions. And, in this regard, the BNP has a lot to answer for, particularly in the context of its organisational principles contravening secularism, its support for Islamist extremist groups, and its orchestration of violent movements tantamount to terrorism.

We cannot avoid these unkind questions for the sake of the nation.