Journey from democracy to dictatorship has begun?

M. Shahidul Islam

With less than eight weeks left for the 9th Parliament to retreat into suspended animation, the pestering constitutional crisis is raising the dreaded spectre of dictatorship returning with a vengeance; thanks to the dogged intransigence of the government with respect to the election modalities.
The government has been delusional in thinking that it has both the watch and the time; unbeknownst that its uncompromising stance relating to the formation of a poll-time Caretaker Government (CG) has already robbed it of the time, leaving it with only the watch itself to show off.

Election timing
The road map broached by the Prime Minister on September 2 about the election timing and the nature of the poll- time government has made matters worse further; by beaming an iniquitous and despondent signal to the opposition parties, as well as to the observers within and outside the country.
The PM said during a scheduled meeting with the Secretaries that (1) the general election would be held without dissolving the current parliament and the cabinet; (2) it will be held within the last 90 days of the parliament’s tenure, which ends on January 24, 2014; (3) the House would not be in session and the cabinet would take no important policy decision during the 90-day interregnum beginning with October 27 and ending on January 24, 2014.
That implies the election must be held by late December or early January, the PM being the chief executive and the civil and the military administrations being under her command. It also implies that incumbent MPs from the ruling parties (Awami League and its allies) will contest the polls using their existing power, office, perks and all the paraphernalia that power has bestowed on them.
This being the precise label playing field of which the government brags about, the opposition parties are faced with a Shakespearean dilemma of some sort: to join or not to join the poll. And, the PM’s previous assertion that she would not ‘budge even a hair’ with respect to the poll mechanism ­and her law minister’s reiteration of the same on September 2 that Constitution would not be amended to accommodate the opposition’s demand for a CG­, the prevailing constitutional crisis has hit the edge of a perilous precipice.

Constitutional contradictions
As was feared, the inherent contradictions in the 15thAmendment to the Constitution have not only come to hound the nation from many fronts, the concentration of power in the hand of a single individual has ushered in the spectre of autocracy; of dysfunctional administration; of paralysis in decision making; and, the plausibility of a return to the October 2006 syndrome when a series of CGs failed to stem the tide of street agitations relating to the neutrality of another interim regime, of another equally detested time.
During the slated poll, if it does take place at all, the PM will commandeer all the executive authorities­ – civil and military – and, it will be entirely on her discretion whether the Election Commission (EC) will get the needed cooperation from the executive branches of the government pursuant to Article 126 of the Constitution.
As well, much needed new laws to overcome the evident hamstring facing the election cannot be enacted pursuant to Article 124 due to the Parliament being rendered dysfunctional as of October 24; pursuant to Article 123.

Army & the RPO
Even if the PM can and does gear up the civil administration to aid the EC in conducting the polls, no viable recourse is left in the instance the law and order situation spills out of control, necessitating the summon of the armed forces in aid of civil power.
The amendment to sub para XXIaa of para 2 of the Election Commission Act 1972 (aka RPO 1971) has snatched away the EC’s right to call the members of the armed forces to quell election-time unrest due to the amended definition of the “law enforcing agency” meaning only the Police Force, Armed Police Battalion, Rapid Action Battalion, Ansar, Battalion Ansar, BGB and the Coast Guard Forces.
An EC source confided that BNP’s formal request, made on March 19 to the EC, to include the army in the RPO as one of the law enforcers could not be complied with due to what the official said ‘order from the government not to do so.’ That being the degree of the EC’s independence, what are the likely scenarios in the instance the main opposition parties decide not to join the poll under such a mismatched, biased and precarious situation?
Scenario one: If the law and order situation remains reasonably and tolerably stable, the government can go it alone, hold the election, and win it. If not, declaration of emergency by the President, pursuant to Article 141A (1), is the only way out.

The Singapore meeting
A meeting in Singapore last week between the incumbent President Khondoker Abdul Hamid and former President HM Ershad discussed that scenario with Ershad posing as the prospective opposition leader in the next parliament, should BNP desist from joining the polls, according to a reliable source.
Scenario two: The imposition of emergency not offering a mandate to suspend the Constitution, election must take place by January 24, 2014 (Article 123). And, the legal validity of an emergency being only for 120 days unless ratified by the parliament (Article 141A(2), the constitutional crisis will exacerbate further due to the government’s inability to re-convene the “dormant parliament” from its feinted slumber.
Scenario three: The emergency will, however, enable the government to deploy the armed forces to preserve law and order under the pretext of national security facing grave danger. It will also ensure that the election is held even without the participation of major political parties under the barrel of guns.
From then on, armed forces, neither the PM nor the President, will roll the dices of power and the flight of dictatorship will take off to a higher altitude to carry the nation toward an unknown destination, as did the last military-backed regime in 2007-2008.
Scenario four: The scenario three being brazenly dictatorial and unacceptable to both domestic and international observers, the nation will be thrown into an irreversible chaos from early 2014; compelling some foreign powers, at some point, to intervene physically in the internal affairs of the nation.
Is the PM willing to go to that extreme? “Yes,” said one of her former aides, “only not to see the BNP-Jamat axis in power again.”
Ironically, this is the vintage politics a generation has digested; this is the passion of hatred it will carry forward; this is the newly-defined patriotism the leaders of today will have bestowed to the posterity.

Source: Weekly Holiday