Political horizon splattered by recipes of perfect storm

The political frying pan is heating up once again. This is unavoidable. Saying goes, when there are no issues of discord invent one to loop your opposition up. Conspiratorial minds are at work to do just that.

An election may be far off, but the main opposition BNP says it will wait until the dooms day, if needed, to have an election without PM Sheikh Hasina ensconced in the top executive chair of the nation while the government spokespersons are sticking to boring and repetitive constitutional nuggets that allow the incumbent PM and the government to have a general election without quitting power.

Outwardly, both sides seem to have some beef in their respective stances. Earlier, the government had amended the constitution to negate any demand for a neutral caretaker regime to conduct the election after it itself used the same means to come to power in 2009. No wonder the main opposition BNP too wants nothing short of an election-time neutral regime, whatever it may be called after the enactment of the controversial 15th amendment that had sunk and scuttled the caretaker provision installed in 1996 to ensure fair elections.

As the tug of war on this intractable issue has been on for few years now, people are simply tired of it. They think the parties spearheading such a destabilizing momentum having ruled this nation for the better part of its existence have no convincing rationale to gyrate the nation toward another devastating convulsion.

Besides, the new phase of this lingering crisis begins at a time when the government is hell bent on consigning BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia behind the bar, and the BNP too is equally determined to minus Sheikh Hasina by chucking her off the post of the PM to ensure an inclusive, interference-free election.

Meanwhile, some unseen law of the nature is moving toward challenging the fates of the ‘battling begums’ who never get tired of being in the driving seats while an entire generation looks in gasping awes and despair as decades pass by, bypassing them altogether.

Anecdotes and witticism are emerging in the social media that some physical but symbolic manifestations of how the ‘two begums’ will be sidelined sooner will emerge when the BGMEA building in the capital’s Hateer Jheel will have come down in a controlled demotion act along with two glittering plagues containing the names of the incumbent PM, who permitted the huge building to come up in a danger-prone restrictive swamp, and of former PM Khaleda Zia, who had inaugurated the illegitimate edifice with much ostentation after the completion of its construction. The order to do so having stemmed from the highest court of the nation, the fate of the BGMEA building is a fait accompli.

Such high political drama and the satire aside, writings on the walls are pretty serious to insinuate the arrival of a perfect political storm in coming days; one that could surpass the intensity of the 2013-2014 mayhems that had cost the nation thousands in deaths and incapacitations and billions in economic losses.

The leftists are gearing up to exchange bouts with the regime on the Ramphal power project building near a global heritage site, on the hiking of gas and electricity prices and other consumer goods, and a number of other issues concerning public and national wellbeing and interest.

Arrayed on the wings are also the radical Islamists who’d been regrouping since their forced exodus from the political landscape after the merciless onslaught on the Hefajat rally in 2013. Sources say the Islamists are flexing fleshes to join the fight when it begins, not before that.

There’s a common, dreadful denomination in all these evolving scenarios. The AL regime is too fractious within; mostly on graft and turf-related intra-squabbles, crisis of legitimacy to govern in the aftermath of the sullied, incredulous and laughable January 2014 election, and its inability to decide between regional powers India and China where to stand. Whether it knows or not, the battle for the ruling party is also one of survival.

And, so is the situation with the main opposition BNP, which has been out of the parliament for nearly three years now and will lose its registration as a political outfit if abstained from participation in the upcoming general election too, according to election regulations.

Amidst this impasse, the ground realities ushered in by the public antipathy toward the intractably entrenched and eternally irreconcilable ruling party and the opposition leaders, and their postures for a last-ditch battle to survive in an impending political maelstrom which the global observers fear to be hijacked by the combined radical forces from the left and the Islamist vintages, are something the nation must be ready to gasp, gravitate and handle without hindrance.

All the bets are hence on the inbuilt institutions like the Presidency, the EC, the bureaucracy, law enforcers, the armed forces, the media and the civic society, who can stand together to deflect and defeat the diverging hot winds blown by protagonists of the warring camps.

Then again, while hope is the elixir of survival, utter desperation is the proven lot of the Bangladeshi people. It’s unlikely that the nation’s vital institutions named above will ever gather pluck and unite to undertake such an indispensable national obligation.

And, herein lays the danger. Almost half a century after being independent, the institutions fed by our hardy taxpayers—the EC, bureaucracy, law enforcers, armed forces, etc.—- are still glued to their individualistic self-interest and the consequent capitulation to the power that be. This time however, they all will pay heavily, as some of them did in the past, especially during the BDR mutiny of 2009.

Such premonitions are recurring and unfortunate; especially at a time when the global economy is in a tailspin and demands for goods and services are dwindling amidst rising protectionism and xenophobic hyperboles stirred by the likes of President Donald Trump and the ultra-right French leader Marine Le Pen, who too wants a ‘Muslim ban’ in Europe in general, and in France in particular.

Add to this volatile mix the dangerously sliding situation in the Korean peninsula where the US, Japan and South Korea may have to suck up and lock horns with a weird North Korea that had armed itself to the teeth with arsenals as threatening as nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the US mainland.

Finally, given that the defeating of the IS in Iraq and Syria is proving a military impossibility to the global and regional powers like the USA, Russia, Turkey and others, no nation can move forward amidst such instabilities unless the internal cleavages are mended first.

It’s time our battling leaders decide whether the country comes first, or this benighted nation still shall serve as a vehicle for their ascendency to power to plunder, prosecute and propagate gaseous, un-substantive, ontological hyperboles and canards that have nothing to do with how the ordinary people dream of a nation based on equitability and rule of law.

Source: Weekly Holiday