Democracy disgraced in the name of upholding it

This is no normal time for Bangladesh as politics has turned both acerbic and mindlessly cruel. Between October 26 and November 13, as many as 26 lives perished, 76 sustained burn injuries -many of them severely and more than 1,500 were left injured otherwise by bomb attacks or torching of vehicles. The toll of the past 19 days says it all. Politics has gone berserk. And it is the common people who are falling victim to it. It is unimaginable in any civilised society that the political feud of parties and/or alliances would use people as their pawn and victimise them with mindless ferocity. Killing in cold blood in the name of politics is the ultimate crime political parties can sponsor or endorse and a society can tolerate. It is all happening here.
There is not language enough for sane people to condemn this kind of barbarity in the name of politics. For God's sake give up this type of political violence, for it is rapacious murder and nothing less. Political parties, leaders and activists can go scot-free only because this legacy has not been judged by its bizarre merit and irrational logic. It is time that the crime was put in its proper perspective. Both warring parties must take blame for this as they are not helping the cause by prolonging the issue of the system of election simply on irrational grounds.
The introduction of senseless violence to politics is a legacy of the 1971 genocide and the extermination programme of the country's intelligentsia. For long a blind eye was turned to campus violence which was pursued with equal murderous rapacity witnessed during the Liberation War. The military rulers did not make a bone of it because it suited to their purpose of consolidating their illegal hold to power. Sadly, the democratic dispensations could not say farewell to this bizarre culture of violence. This country has seen great movements in 1962 and 1969 but never did such movements cause any kind of physical harm or death to common people. It was the law enforcement agencies that were responsible for any such violent incident. The leaders and followers commanded respect from people and they usually expressed their allegiance to the political campaigns on their own volition.
Even during the movement against Ershad's autocracy, the political parties on both sides of the divide demonstrated maximum restraint in the face of provocation by the law enforcers. No member of the police was attacked let alone killed. Political programmes are nothing if not the exercise of the spirit of moral superiority. Men like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela have shown how the moral superiority gets the better of the brute force with which the oppressive establishment confronts it. Leaders and their followers have long forgotten that there was a time when they could successfully appeal to the moral choice of common people.
Today the tactic resorted to is intimidation and coercion. Even university students with no political affiliation are taught a lesson or two if they refuse to take part in a procession or any such political programme. If one has a right to arrange a political programme, another has the right not to join that programme. Democracy stipulates that every person has the right to follow the dictate of his/her conscience. No wonder, there is an overt attempt to create panic among people by torching and smashing vehicles on the eve of hartals. This is a double crime. When political elements take recourse to such criminal acts, they no longer remain followers of politics; rather become the worst type of criminals.
When people fear the political actions, those actions cannot receive approval from any political party worth its name. Now innocent people are falling victim to the mindless game of politics. People have never endorsed this kind of politics whoever may have sponsored it. Their confidence in politics has eroded. Not a very good indication. Politics is necessary to sustain democracy but this kind of nasty politics has compromised the values of democracy. Political leaderships must take responsibility for disgracing politics. In democracy people's rights and privileges are secured but in this case those are being curtailed. Before it is too late the political adversaries should realize the far-reaching adverse impact of such politics on society, particularly on the young generation, and reach a working formula agreeable to both sides for conducting the national polls and allow democracy to take a firm root.
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