AL and BNP need to rescue each other

The Awami League-driven government is here again. It’s going to steer the helms, constitutionally, for the next five years. It wasn’t easy for the AL, as it had to overcome quite a lot of obstacles from the opposition political alliance. However, the success of the AL-led alliance, especially of Sheikh Hasina, needs to be commended in winning the game over the opposition. They played it in such a way that the need for a state of emergency, or something similar to that, wasn’t necessary.

The opposition, on the other hand, seems to have missed the chance of winning an election. Political analysts thought the BNP-led alliance would have won if it participated in the polls. Khaleda Zia remained unmoved as she wanted Sheikh Hasina to step down from the prime minister’s post as the pre-condition to participate in the polls.

However, she could have changed the political wind if she had accepted Hasina’s invitation and gone to Ganabhaban. If she had made an announcement of heading for Ganabhaban and urged all her party members as well as the people at large, it would have made a huge difference in her favour.

That, we believe, was a great and sure chance of occupying the streets as well as winning the minds of the people. However, she missed it.

Having said that, it seems the leaders of AL and BNP have both weakened themselves in the eyes of the people. The BNP has weakened itself by not participating in the election which may have borne the party a great result, and the AL has done it by holding that election which wasn’t, in any way, competitive for the party itself.

The AL had little to prove in the 10th parliamentary polls. As part of their electoral themes, one party was adamant to keep the democratic process on, and the other was clinging on to hold the polls under a caretaker mechanism.

This situation is déjà vu for the common people – an old cycle of two main political parties that have actually no difference between themselves. At least the common people’s experience says these two parties bear the same goal in their minds: To go to power and develop the lot of the country.

So, if they have the same goal, it’s very surprising that they always fail to sit together and nurture that common ground. If we remember the Mujib-Yahiya dialogue before the independence of Bangladesh, they had different goals and that’s why their dialogue failed.

As the party in power, AL needed to do more than make just one phone call. It saw this was coming and it needed to show more fervour towards the BNP. On the other hand, what it did was to push (and push and push) BNP towards Jamaat to such an extent that BNP almost reached to a point of no return. That was a mistake that the AL committed by attaching BNP with Jamaat when it needed to rescue the party from them.

If AL wanted to isolate Jamaat, which follows entirely different political values from these two parties, it really needed to do something for salvaging BNP from the clutches of Jamaat.

On the other hand, BNP itself also hardly did anything to leave the Jamaatis. BNP’s stance on the war crimes issue sounded as if it was in favour of Jamaat. Again, in order to raise a movement against the government, BNP completely depended on Jamaat. BNP said the alliance with Jamaat was an electoral one. But it failed to realise that Jamaat followers would be of little use when it came to voting.

However, if BNP could identify itself as “BNP” in the past few years, it would have acquired some political strength of its own and it would be difficult for the AL to ram BNP on Jamaat.

These two political parties seem to have always failed to realise that they, having the same objectives, are the ones who would steer Bangladesh to a place that the people hope for. Jamaat, as a party, has never made clear what it wants. Its activities don’t indicate that it wants to go to power.

The people would negate it, even if it wanted to. On the other hand, Jatiya Party also has no such aim. We fail to understand why it even exists as a political party.

Therefore, AL and BNP need to come out of these dull elements for making themselves stronger. If two of them are strong, we believe the future of democracy (as well as stability) in Bangladesh wound be brighter. They need to work towards rescuing each other for the sake of the people.