One more hartal, one more day of political violence and one more instance showing that politics is not taking us towards a solution. This scenario has been going on for the last year or so but has picked up pace and fire in the last six months as political focus has been drawn to the activities around the war crimes tribunal and its fallout. It doesn’t matter at all whether the trial is a positive or a negative event but it has acted as a catalyst to expose the deep fissures in the national political system and the ability to explosively bring forward new forces into the play but our inability to behave maturely and move on to better political fields.
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The Opposition in the country is no longer a political party but is imaged as an enemy of the people which changes with every regime change. In 2007, the BNP tried this election trick first and brought in one person after another – all BNP supporters – to become the Caretaker chief and ultimately ended up with the President holding the Chief Executive post as well. Prof. Iajuddin Ahmed – a BNP nominee – became both and the AL challenged it on the street and created such a situation that a military intervention became impossible to avoid. Not that it was a good thing. The military probably came in to protect its highly lucrative ‘blue’ service money which keeps not just the officers but the soldiers happy. But the reluctance of the military to step in has been obvious this time as in 1990 and the BNP has simply had to cut off this option from their equation except making threats.
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The great victim of the military’s lack of interest in taking over is the BNP since it’s obvious that it doesn’t have the clout on its own to club down the AL. The BNP tried several things but failed to dent the Government’s fort. First, it was standard agitation and hartals including a touch of violence but that didn’t have any impact partly because after the first hartal no new enthusiasm was created and hartals made life so difficult for the ordinary people who care very little about who is in power and who comes to it and how. The BNP thought it would get a new lease of life after the Jamaat trials became an issue but the AL survived it. While it does make the AL uncomfortable, the impact has been limited.
The Jamaat-e-Islami is also a little bit of a burden for the BNP and the opportunity for making them more popular by pushing this movement is limited because the cause is protecting war criminals. No matter how controversial the trial process is, very few want the Jamaat to win this movement. Nor did the Shahbagh Movement produce a counterpart and no matter how abusive the BNP was of it, it had no popular response. The daily Amar Desh was fighting a good fight for it but once shut down, the BNP is quite voiceless and nothing has happened. It’s clear that the organisational structure of the BNP has been overwhelmed by arrests and cases and the party simply can’t put enough leaders out in the field to mount a counter to the AL assault. It’s not only nostalgia that is fuelling the call for Tarique Zia’s return, its desperate need as well. Which is why some have asked for a political loan of his wife, Zubeida if Tarique fails? It does seem Khaleda Zia’s charisma needs a booster shot before she can tackle Sheikh Hasina.
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Of course they reached this point after failing with the Hifazat-e Islam card and twice so. The BNP seriously thought that the overnight stay at Shapla Chattar would topple the government. When the evening jalao-porao didn’t change the scenario the angry activists fled the scene, leaving poor students and madrassah people to face the wrath of the state. The situation was made worse by the mad claims by the BNP leaders of thousands dead at police hands and almost everyone belonging to the BNP and its supporters came out looking like fools. It does seem the BNP has no significant card left to play and for the moment must wait for a political gift that will revive its chances. For the moment it’s not exerting any major pressure on the AL.
Unless its main ally Jamaat-e-Islami also has got some more strategies which we don’t know yet it must wait for the verdict of Ghulam Azam to initiate a new stage of agitation.
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In a country where the political parties have no sense of politics and treat each other as state enemies, legal or constitutional politics has no role to play. In such an infantile democracy normal rules of the game can’t apply. That is why the caretaker government concept was developed which is built on the mistrust and enmity of the two main parties. Through the 15th amendment, the AL tried to formalise political opportunism to come to power in a much more sophisticated manner than the BNP did in 2007. For the BNP, doing what the AL did didn’t work and so they are stuck. Since the political system has become defunct, it of course doesn’t matter who comes to power but how much that will add to the quality of lives of the average Bangladeshi is difficult to understand.
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The AL looks strong, the BNP looks haggard, the Jamaat-e-Islami is very rattled, the Hifazat-e Islami has disappeared and the people continue to suffer. Much better try to guess how many dead bodies were actually never recovered from the Rana plaza than our political future. After all, when the purpose of the garments factory owners and the political parties are in principle the same which is personal gain at all costs, Rana plaza seems to be an apt metaphor.
Source: Bd news24
