The what-not-to-do manual of politics

Over the last nine years, the BNP has typically dealt with its own failures by taking time to regroup and reorganise. But the much touted – and much needed – reorganisation of the party has never actually taken place. Instead, the party has experienced an unrelenting losing streak and fallen into increasing disarray. In this series, the Dhaka Tribune looks into why the party has not been able to put its house in order in nearly a decade. This is the second part of the report

When the BNP stepped down in 2006 after completing its third tenure, nobody would have thought that it was the closest the party was ever going to get to having state power again.

Nine years later in 2015, with no representation even in parliament because of a national election boycott in 2014, the party that ruled the country three times since 1979, now appears to be the farthest from forming a government.

This is also the first time that the party has ever been totally out of the Jatiya Sangsad – neither as the treasury nor the opposition – since parliamentary democracy was reinstalled in Bangladesh in 1991.

Given the importance of being part of the legislature in parliamentary democracy, the boycott and failure to prevent the election despite bloody street protests meant that the BNP – who had never had any shortage of public support – was now on the wrong side of the political spectrum.

According to noted political researcher Rounaq Jahan: “Political leaders have recently been promising that they would strengthen party organisation particularly at the grassroots level. This is an indication that they are aware of the organisational weakness of their parties. But up to now we have not seen any credible action which could lead to strengthening of the party organisation.”

Because the senior leaders are not public representatives anymore, they have run out of reasons to go to their respective electoral areas.

That, coupled with hundreds of political lawsuits filed in connection with the pre-election violence, brought organisational activities at the grassroots to a standstill.

Earlier this year, with its ranks looking anything but organised, the BNP went into the second major street movement in a year to oust the government.

The way BNP approached the movement was very similar to the pre-election movement. For three months, hartals and blockades were enforced, hundreds of passenger vehicles were firebombed and vandalised and crude bombs blasted on the roads and highways in which scores were burnt to death. The economy suffered the second major setback within a year which directly affected people’s incomes.

It all started in the first week of January when the government prevented BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia from attending a rally marking the anniversary of the 2014 election, which the party and its partners had boycotted.

For a few days, security forces kept Khaleda confined in her Gulshan office. But she refused to come out even after the security cordon was withdrawn and utility connections to her office were severed.

In the meantime, Khaleda’s youngest son Arafat Rahman Koko, wanted in several corruption cases in the country, died in exile of cardiac arrest. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina went to condole her political foe, but was never allowed to enter the office. That, coupled with the deaths in the streets, backfired as people did not take it very well.

According to political scientist Ataur Rahman, BNP has repeatedly failed to devise a comprehensive strategy to achieve their goal.

“To achieve any goals, a political party must have concrete strategies and complete methods. But it seems that the BNP does not have any such thing,” he said.

Weeks later, the government announced the schedule for the long pending city elections in Dhaka and Chittagong. And BNP, who had by then realised that the movement was not going to remove the government, took the city elections as an exit route.

But the BNP – going into the city elections with a crumbling organisational structure resulting out of two back-to-back failed movements within a year or so – was not going to get too far.

Eventually, the Awami League candidates swept all the city polls with BNP even failing to ensure polling agents in all the polling centres in the two cities.

Since the last full-time secretary general Khandkar Delwar Hossain died in March 2011, BNP has been doing with an acting secretary general, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.

The party usually elects a senior leader for this post by holding national councils held every three years. However, the last time BNP held a national council was in December 2009; this means that there has been no councils after Delwar’s death.

Regular councils – where dedicated and deserving leaders are rewarded with party posts – is also key to maintaining organisational integrity.

Moreover, the national executive committee, which is supposed to meet once every six months, has not been able to do so after April 2012.

BNP standing committee member Nazrul Islam Khan told the Dhaka Tribune recently: “The ruling party’s strategy was not to allow us reorganise. Whenever we tried to get things together, the government created adverse situations.”

He also said: “We have tried to hold councils, even rented auditoriums, but had to pull out after the government arrested our senior leaders”

After nearly two years of hibernation during the tenure of the army-backed caretaker government in 2007-08, politics warmed up before the 2008 national election in which Awami League won with a landslide majority.

The Awami League’s victory in that election was propelled by its pledge for trying the 1971 war criminals and BNP’s close ties with Jamaat-e-Islami – a party that was against Bangladesh’s liberation. Although there have been a lot of rumours, BNP’s ties with Jamaat are still in tact.

It was after losing in that election that the BNP had first said that it was going to “come back strong after getting reorganised.”

Rounaq Jahan said: “There has been a longstanding complaint that political parties do not follow their own organisational rules and procedures. For example, constitution of all major political parties mandate that national councils be held every three years to elect the party leadership. But with the exception of the Awami League which had organised council meetings every three years since its founding in 1949, other parties had failed to do so.

“The BNP had organised only five national councils since its founding in 1978 which means on an average a council meeting every seven or eight years. This is a violation of the party’s own constitution. What is also worthwhile to note is that the BNP did not organise any council meetings between 1993 to 2009. This means the party did not organize any council meeting even when they were in power,” she said.

From 2009-2013, instead of strengthening the organisational structure by holding national and local-level councils, BNP gave full concentration on making strategies to oust the Awami League government.

In the opinion of political scientist Ataur Rahman, BNP’s threat to oust the government without strengthening the party was a wrong strategy.

After the government scrapped the provision for caretaker government by amending the constitution, BNP’s demand was for “an election under non-partisan caretaker government.”

During the period, a few mass rallies here and there and some road marches and the sweeping triumphs in the 2013 city elections showed that the party had the popularity but did very little to rejuvenate the grassroots.

Asked what their plans were for the near future, Nazrul Islam Khan said: “It is true that we are facing some difficulties. We are not well organised right now, but we will be organised as soon as people see the problem in the government’s attitude towards the BNP and start coming under our umbrella.”

Source: Dhaka Tribune