Fast forward to August 5, 2024. The ouster of the Awami League sent an electrifying burst of joy across the capital; the very party that was elected in 2008 in a landslide victory with 263 seats won out of 300 in parliament and with the highest-ever voter turnout of more than 83 per cent.
People elsewhere, in other districts across Bangladesh, also took to the streets to express the same feeling for completely different outcomes materialised by them -- more than a decade apart. As the centre of all political and economic activities, Dhaka witnessed the sharpest shift in public mood during the climactic moments of the events.
Between the rise and the fall of the Awami League, the hopes for greater leadership, who would take the country towards a new horizon, were ignited and dashed. People witnessed how the party chosen to lead the country reduced itself to serving only those who were not only loyal to them but were also committed to the cause of strengthening it by wiping out dissents.
The party and those beneficiaries supported each other. Bangladesh went through significant infrastructure development in that period, which was also part of the extractive system. Because, as one can guess, any system needs something to feed on to survive; the development narrative was the ousted regime's survival tool.
The strategy worked for quite a long time before people were awakened to the deepening exploitation and deprivation. They not only needed infrastructure for trade and business but also fair ownership in the growth that the data portrayed. The people also felt the pain of being robbed of the power to elect their representative in the meticulously-designed partisan elections of 2014, 2018 and 2024. Over time, the number of the aggrieved grew and the flicker of public anger turned into an inferno eager to destroy everything that would come in the way. Domestic and international forces may claim to have patronised the movement but there is no denial of the outpouring of rage against the then government or the then ruling party.
So, what was July 36 for?
A beginning, maybe, from where we had been left [by the previous government] seeking our way out of the social and economic trap. As the storm of rage swept through the country toppling the government, the next dawn appeared to promise a future of fair society, transparency and accountability. Or is it that the ill-fated people, who would want no political favour but fair opportunities to earn a dignified life, desperately needed renewed hopes and dreams.
Instead, they got new faces.
The trucks loaded with half-fed teenagers and youths in their early twenties, rallying around in post-uprising Dhaka, are reminiscent of the past practices of the oppressive regime. They chant slogans borrowed from the past regimes with a few tweaks to appease the new prospective political rulers.
Wouldn't their fate change! Will they ever get decent work to earn a living instead of standing in crowds under the blistering sun or in rains for a few bills and a packet of biriyani? Will they ever be treated as fellow citizens whose wellbeing is what politicians need to protect?
Nothing seems to have changed -- fundamentally. The tendency to rant about nepotism, money laundering, corruption, who truly holds the spirits of Bangladesh and who does not in futile efforts to establish that the present is better than the past. The accusations facing the fallen rulers, though justified, would never absolve their predecessors of the wrongdoings committed during their time. Nor would they cleanse the reputation that the incumbent rulers are in the pursuit of gaining.
The legal system is again at the hands of political sycophants who can make anything happen "legally". So, we see actors, players, journalists, social activists and even a former chief justice arrested on charges of murders, a bizarre way indeed to establish the promised law and order and justice. Cases are dismissed against those, who are deemed to be on the right side of history as quickly as cases emerge against those on the wrong side.
The nation, which was polarised by the rhetoric of the Awami League, has become even more polarised in the last one year. It has been divided into perceived friends and foes. Corruption and bribery have been elevated only to put the past regime to shame. A couple of months back BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir in a public event said bribery had increased five-fold.
In the meantime, the apparent leaders of the young generations, who vowed to bring reforms in almost everything to turn Bangladesh into a brand new nation, have been seen walking in the footsteps of those whom they hate so much. Fascism is their most-loved word that they remind people of every now and then and then they interpret any criticism of them into siding with their enemies.
They are also on the prowl to take over the properties, which, they consider, were acquired through illegal means. The line between what is legal and illegal is increasingly becoming blurry.
A few of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement have reportedly been caught red-handed in attempts to extort money with threats of fictitious cases. They are not to take the blame. The social and political weapons, which have suddenly become accessible to them, must be tempting, ushering them into the world of limitless power, influence and money. That is what a corrupt political system does even with the purest souls after they get into its fold. Such a system is so well rooted here. However, its guise of to-serve-the-public has been torn apart. Politicians have become so conspicuous in their naked manifestation of greed for power.
So, is this all that so many lives have been lost for!
The nation needs a leader, who would uproot the hideous politics of serving self-interest, who would know the value of unity, harmony, and reconciliation, and who would be willing to sacrifice what it takes to lay out a path for collective prosperity.
People are ready to follow but one needs to lead them in the right direction. How proud they were when they stood guard in the darkest hours in the absence of any government last year to save neighbourhoods.
Hopes, aspirations and optimism in their eyes were and are to be cultivated to build the nation from where it is now, instead of rebuilding it, which entails razing everything to the ground first before anything is erected.
The writer is a journalist. devnathbishakha@gmail.com