Is Awami League at ease, or uneasy?

The day that the four BNP members of parliament took oath, many of the headlines read, ‘Awami League relieved, BNP uneasy.’ There are many reasons for Awami League to be relieved. They can now say that the election was inclusive of all political parties and so is the parliament. But at the end of the day, the 30 December election certainly hasn’t put the ruling party at ease. The foreign media and certain powerful countries have questioned the election and called for investigations into alleged anomalies . Even allies of the ruling 14 party alliance questioned the sheer number of votes supposedly cast in the election.

Six candidates of BNP, including its secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, won in the eleventh parliamentary election. Mirza Fakhrul did not take oath, stating that the other four had taken oath in keeping with the party decision. He did not take oath, also in keeping with the party decision. Zahidur Rahman who had taken oath earlier in violation of party decision, had been expelled. This was said to be their strategy.

In political circles this is being seen as a victory for Awami League and defeat for BNP. But with crises mounting one after the other since the election, it would not come as a shock if victory and defeat change sides. The government is having to face a host of new problems, along the the old ones already there.

A mother of four was raped on the very day of the election for having voted in favour of BNP’s ‘sheaf of paddy’. There were bloody clashes within Awami League itself. On 20 February a devastating fire broke out in a chemical factory in Old Dhaka’s Chawk Bazar, killing 71, indicating that no action had been taken after a similar fire had broken out in Nimtali. The government had not kept its commitment to relocate chemical factories and warehouses from the old town. Two former industries ministers had a go at each other in a mudslinging blame game. Then not too long after the Chawk Bazar fire, yet another tragedy struck – the fire in a Banani high rise where 26 persons died.

Awami League’s discomfort is not with the opposition, but within itself. The 70-year-old Awami League likes to call itself a well disciplined party, but before every election, international conflict inevitably arises. It is ministers versus members of parliament or members of parliament against upazila chairmen. There were even clashes during the recent upazila elections between the officially nominated candidates of the ruling party and the party’s ‘rebel’ candidates. Many ministers and members of parliament were backing the ‘rebels’. Repeated warnings from the centre did not quell the conflict.

Success in running a country can never be measured in terms of how many seats a party has won or how effectively it has managed to crush the opposition. Actually, the more seats a party wins, the more risk it has of falling into the danger. The leaders and workers of the party become wayward and go out of control. There are many such instances in post-independent Bangladesh and at present too, but the biggest lesson of history is that no one learns from history. The Awami League leaders refuse to understand that this imbalance in politics is harmful not only to democracy, but also to the rule of law.

The country has seen a lot of development during the rule of the Awami League government, economic growth has spiraled, people’s per capita income and life expectancy both have increased. The government can take credit for all this, but in actuality the financial condition of the drivers of development, that is, the farmers, the migrant workers and the workers in the local industry, remains weak.

Alongside the successes, the government has no dearth of failures too. Awami League has spoken of diminishing discrimination, but this has increased instead. It has spoken of halting extrajudicial killings, but it has failed to do so. It has spoken to restoring order to the banking sector and the share market, but this has not happened. The Khandakar Ibrahim Khaled report identified the main culprits of the 2010 share market scam, but the government took no action against them. The finance minister admitted that the share market is out of control. The banking sector too is in a fragile state. The prime minister Sheikh Hasina warned against manipulating the share market, but did not specify the manipulators. Unless action is taken against them, mere rhetoric won’t be able to stop the share market from crashing.

In its election manifesto, Awami League spoke of zero tolerance against corruption, militancy, terrorism and drugs. But none of its operations in this regard, except against militancy, has been successful. It spoke against social injustice, but social injustice has crossed all limits, particularly when it comes to oppression of women and children. Worse still, a section of Awami League leaders and activists are involved in such misdemeanours, in heinous crimes such as the rape of a mother in Subarnachar or the burning to death of a girl at the Sonagazi madrasa.

If any failure of Awami League or the government is pointed out, the ministers and leaders raise a hue and cry. The party’s allies have started speaking up. Workers Party president and former minister Rashed Khan Menon, in an interview with Prothom Alo, said that freedom of expression was at stake. Speaking about the upazila election, he said not only was the election rigged, but their party candidates could not even contest. At another event he said, “Our state is now in the hands of marauding capitalists.” Justice of good governance cannot be expected from such a state. Jashod president Hasanul Huq Inu also burst out angrily, “It cannot be up to Awami League to decide which party will come to the parliament as the opposition.” He wants a genuine opposition, not puppets.

There is even suppressed tension between Awami League’s old ministers and the news ones in cabinet. Speaking in parliament on 10 March, former minister and Awami League presidium member Mohammed Nasim said, “From the ministers’ statements it seems as if no work was done before and only they have started getting thing done. Don’t try to make yourselves out to be heroes.”

The road transport sector in Bangladesh is rife with disorder and injustice. On one side everyone calls for order to be restored in the road sector, but on the other side, the transport owners and workers simply thumb their noses at the government. When two young students were killed by a bus at the Airport Road last year, the youth rose up in protest. In face of that protest, the parliament passed a law, increasing the prison term of drivers guilty of such fatal accidents, from three to five years. If the killing was deliberate, then the penalty would be death.

Now the pro-government transport owners and workers association has risen up against the law. The road transport federation executive president is Shahjahan Khan and transport owners association president is Mashiur Rahman. The law was passed when they were ministers, but now Shahjahan Khan issues warnings to the government against such a law. They want the law to be abolished, but that will only mean even more deaths on the highways. Will their threats put the government at ease or unease, that remains a question.

* Sohrab Hassan is joint editor of Prothom Alo and a poet. He may be contacted at sohrabhassan55@gmail.com. This piece appeared in Prothom Alo print edition and has been rewritten in English by Ayesha Kabir.