M Serajul Islam : THE Awami League is in denial of history. In December 1970, it won 167 of the 169 seats in East Pakistan in Pakistan’s 300-member national assembly and was set to form the government in Islamabad. Pakistan’s military regime did not want to give power to the Awami League. Instead, it declared the fairest of all of Pakistan’s general elections till then null and void that started Bangladesh’s war of liberation. The rest is history.
Bangladesh fought and won the liberation war. A new nation was born, based on respect for democracy and human rights. The same Awami League that had led Bangladesh’s 1971 war of liberation held two of the most controversial general elections in Bangladesh’s history — the 2014 and the 2018 general elections — that will forever remain the darkest chapters in Bangladesh’s electoral history.
No votes were cast against the contestants of the Awami League and its allies in 154 of the 300 seats of the parliament in the 2014 election because there was no contestant against them. In 2018, the Awami League and its leaders and activists with the help of the Election Commission and the law enforcement agencies allowed votes to be cast for candidates of the Awami League and its allies the midnight before polling day. The 2018 general election, thus, earned the dubious nickname of ‘midnight election’.
The country that won its liberation through the sacrifices of lives of hundreds of thousands for a sovereign state based on democracy and human rights has had no free and fair election since the Awami League came to power in January 2009. Citizens who attained the right to vote after 2009 are still waiting to vote in a general election. Meanwhile, 14 years have passed. The Election Commission headed by Kazi Habibul Awal is preparing for another election like the past two elections, only this one is likely to be far worse, more shameful for the nation and dangerous.
The Election Commission is an extremely powerful constitutional body but only in serving interests of the ruling party. It, thus, saw nothing and heard nothing about the way the Awami League regime foiled the October 28 grand rally of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party that was peaceful to a fault. It chose the ostrich mindset while the police arrested most of the BNP’s senior leaders, including its secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, sent its grass-roots leaders, activists and supporters running from pillar to post for fear of arbitrary arrests and locked its main office with police barricading every entrance to spread fear in the BNP-led opposition the same way the Pakistan army had done after March 26, 1971.
The chief election commissioner, instead, invited the political parties to the headquarters of the Election Commission for dialogues on November 4 to prepare for the next general election. His letter to the BNP was ‘delivered’ outside its main office for surreal reasons. Unfortunately for the commission, the crackdown on the Bangladesh Nationalist Party on October 28 and the developments thereafter unlike the developments after March 26, 1971 were videotaped and audiotaped in real time on WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube and carried on the social media that were unavailable in 1971.
These videotapes and audiotapes and other evidence of the October 28 gathered in real time have established that the violence and disturbances that occurred that day were caused almost entirely in a planned manner by the Awami League regime, its people and the law enforcement agencies. These have also established that the Awami League had asked its activists at the ‘peace rally’ that it held the same day, ie October 28, to be prepared for the imagined violence of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
The evidence available to all and sundry on what occurred on October 28 has further established that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party had asked its supporters and activists repeatedly to come to its grand rally peacefully to flag the demand for the next general election to be held under the caretaker government system. The AL leaders, nevertheless, threatened to do unto the BNP what they had done to the Hefazat leading to the 2014 election. The reference was intended to put fear in the hearts of BNP supporters by reminding them of the Hefazat event of that time.
The commission’s ‘ostrich mindset’ for escaping from reality has failed miserably. It now stands before the nation like the emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ naked and fully exposed. The commission’s actions since October 28 have explained better than the BNP could why it cannot participate in the election that the commission wants to hold on January 7 except in a state of insanity.
The BNP’s non-violent mass movement since October 2022 in the face of the gravest of provocations, most of it recorded in video and audiotapes in real time, has destroyed the ruling party’s narrative against the BNP as a party that uses violence and terror as political tactics. The violence and the disturbances of October 28 again recorded on video and audiotapes in real time have been particularly damaging for the ruling party. These videotapes and audiotapes exposed the ruling party’s determination to do whatever is necessary to remain in power.
The ruling party has also been exposed the same way to the United States, its allies and the United Nations. They, thus, want the AL regime to hold the next election in a free, fair, and peaceful manner so that voters can elect a government of their choice. India, too, supports the will of the people to be reflected in the next general election. They, thus, do not want the one-sided election that the commission has proposed to give the ruling party its fourth consecutive term.
The Election Commission is, therefore, facing a Himalayan task to hold the next general election. The domestic opposition is formidable with the BNP’s movement for the political, economic and electoral, now supported by the majority of people and suppressed by the regime with a brutal force. There is no third party in Bangladesh’s politics like the Jatiya Party in 2014 to give credibility to the election that Kazi Habibul Awal is preparing for.
The regime has also been exposed for using dubious means to break the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and has failed miserably. The regime has allured a few insignificant parties and individuals into the fray that has created massive embarrassment to the commission’s attempts at holding the next general election because of the dubious ways they were allured. At this stage, it, therefore, appears most unlikely that the commission would be able to hold an election even like the absurdly controversial 2014 general election.
The Election Commission has placed the nation’s conscience on the ballot by ensuring that the BNP and its allies would not join the election in its eagerness to serve the regime. The commission would have done itself and the country a world of good if it had read the French Iranian graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, et cetera, Marjane Satrapi’s novel Persepolis where she said that ‘it is fear that makes us lose our conscience… it is also what transforms us into cowards.’ The commission has backed the regime’s fear to keep the BNP and its allies off the next general election. It has, thus, prepared the nation for the transformation.
The external environment is far worse and dangerous for the future of Bangladesh. Like Don Quixote in Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes’s epic novel of the same title, the regime has picked up the fight with the United States. The outcome is inevitable. The west and the United Nations will follow the United States and refuse legitimacy to any election that the commission may be able to hold. The majority of people are in a mass movement for their political, human, and economic rights and are unlikely to give up their fight without regaining their rights with history to back them.
The consequences for Bangladesh, if brutal force wins over democracy in the short term, would be disastrous, particularly to the economy already on its knees since the Russia-Ukraine war. Bangladesh is looking at the barrel of the gun without a negotiated settlement to the ongoing existential political crisis facing the nation.
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