Prospects for reaching a political consensus
Md. Anwarul Kabir | Wednesday, 28 May 2008
THE caretaker government has laid emphasis on drawing out a charter for national consensus through political dialogue. Although there is confusion about the outcome of the ongoing dialogue in the context of possible absence of two major political parties, discourse of the proposed 'national charter' gets special attention in the academic arena.
The question arises about the objectivity of such a national charter. No doubt, for transforming sick and turbulent political arena of the country into a healthy and stable one, consensus on different issues among the political parties is a must. The people of the country want to see a qualitative change in politics in line with true democratic ethos. For this, the present corrupt political culture must be changed. Here the term 'corrupt political culture' does not point to only the financial corruption. Rather in this case ideological corruption should be considered first. In fact, ideological corruption is the root of all sorts of corruption including financial one. Unfortunately, most of the major political parties of the country are now suffering from the ideological corruption.
The erosion of ideology in political parties has not occurred in a day. In fact, if we look at history, it would become clear that such ideological erosion, indeed, has begun since the installation of undemocratic authoritarian regime at the power centre after the brutal killing of Bangabandhu. If we objectively analyse the political history of the country, then it will be found that the political party -- Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) -- which originated iii the 'otherwise restricted' area under the captainship of an authoritarian ruler is indeed devoid of any ideology. Its founder, a man in uniform turned into a politician, late president General Ziaur Rahman formed this party while he was at the centre of power and the only objective to form this platform was to legalise his tenure and hence to stay in power. So, he did not hesitate to include the politicians of different ideologies, starting from ultra-right to ultra left-segments of our political domain in this platform. Irony is that being a valiant freedom fighter, just to fulfil his political ambition, Zia showed little respect to the spirit of our liberation. In fact, it was Zia, who divided the nation into pro-liberation and anti-liberation groups by legalising communal politics in Bangladesh for his own political interest. He shrewdly translated his infamous utterance "I will make politics difficult for the politicians" into reality by dividing the nation into pro-and anti-liberation groups. By distorting our secular constitution grew out of the spirit of our war of liberation Zia re-established the communal politics in the independent Bangladesh. Perhaps, this was the worst ideological corruption of Zia and the people of the land are still suffering from this distortion of the constitution. Though president Zia was himself free from financial corruption, evidences suggest that massive financial massive election engineering and transforming the parliament into dysfunctional one stalled the democracy process during his regime.
After the death of President Zia, his successor President Sattar did not get enough time to show his credibility in politics, for within a short time he was ousted from power through an army coup led by president General Ershad. The authoritarian leader General Ershad followed the footstep of his predecessor and by introducing Islam as the state religion, he distorted our original constitution further. Besides, the Ershad era institutionalised financial corruption at the state level.
However, after the fall of the autocrat regime of General Ershad in 1990 through long mass movements, the people of the country looked forward to having a significant change in political arena of the country. But it never materialised. During the period of the first phase of Khaleda Zia's regime the ethos of parliamentary democracy were largely ignored. Even the major political party -- the Awami League (AL) -- during that period failed to act as a responsible opposition party in the framework of parliamentary democracy. Initial refusal of election result, calling of frequent ineffective hartals, and frequent boycott of parliament alienated the AL from the common people during that period. Besides, it also failed to uphold its secular ideological flag rightly. In this context, the AL's undeclared treaty with the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh, before 1996 election can be cited.
Though Sheikh Hasina's rule between 1996 and 2000 was relatively better in terms of many pro-people aspects (e.g. selection of nonpartisan, neutral president, maintaining low prices of essentials, water treaty with India, peace treaty for the Chittagong Hill Tracts), the dominance of muscleman and financial corruption was also highly traced during her period. Although the AL during that time tried to uphold some values of the parliamentary democracy, for instances the initiation of the question session for the Prime Minister, and the holding of regular meetings of different parliamentary sub-committees in decision making processes, the Jatiya Sangsad or parliament could not be transformed into an effective institution, due to total non-cooperation of the major opposition party, BNP. During this time, BNP followed the footstep of Awami League when the latter was in opposition and frequently boycotted parliamentary sessions and called for series of hartals creating public harassment.
Endless financial corruption and total ideological collapse have portrayed the last BNP-led coalition government as the worst one. At one stage, however, there was a popular belief that the BNP's leadership was no more in Khaleda Zia's hands. Especially, at the advent of the 2001 election, the shifting of leadership from the older generation of the BNP to the younger generation had been marked. Especially, after the Election 2001, the young group (also known as Young Turk) of the BNP led by Khaleda's son Tarique Zia based in 'Hawa Bhaban', virtually led the party in all aspects. Unfortunately, the members of this young group have no political ideology other than their own vested interest to loot public money using the state influence in every way. This young group centred at Hawa Bhaban, in fact, installed a parallel government during Khaleda's regime.
Perhaps the dangerous ethical corruption of the alliance government was nurturing extremist groups with a view to utilising them against their political opponents. Politicisation of public institutions like public service commission, election commission, police department, judiciary and the secretariats was objectively and purposefully done during this period. Even after the transition of power to the caretaker government headed by Professor Iazuddin Ahmed, the Hawa Bhaban controlled the administration with the design of election engineering. However, the AL as a major opposition political party failed to carry out its responsibilities during this period also. It failed to fight for the people in the contemporary contexts. As for example, during that period, the AL could successfully organise the people to fulfil their popular demands -- tackling electricity crisis, water crisis, price-hikes, monga etc. On the contrary, from the beginning of the formation of the alliance government, the only agenda that had been adopted by Hasina's AL was just to topple the government by any means. Perhaps the AL's major ethical corruption came out in the open during the period of Professor Iazuddin's caretaker government when it signed a treaty with Khelafat Majlis, with a view to forming a grand electoral alliance against the BNP-led alliance.
On top of these, the ideological bankruptcy of both the AL and the BNP was highlighted when both of them wanted to fetch former president Ershad under the banner of their respective alliances. Besides, the use of black money and muscleman and trades in nominating candidates for the election were marked as the common features for all of the major parties.
The essence of the above account may identify some negative attributes of our political domain as stated below: a) ideological corruption, b) rise of communal politics, c) financial corruption, d) intolerance among the political parties, e) use of muscleman and black money in the electoral process and election engineering, f) undermining parliamentary ethos and making the parliament dysfunctional, g) nurturing extremism and political hooligans. h) politicisation of public institutions, and i) calling for frequent but ineffective hartals.
However, the people of the country really want to get rid of the above stated curses in our political arena because at the end of the day, politics controls all the spheres of life. For this, the political parties must reach a consensus. But the point is whether the caretaker government has any right -- moral or legal -- to initiate any national charter for consensus.
The effort of the incumbent caretaker government, in view of its constitutional footing, is likely to face a legal controversy in the future. Can such an important charter be chalked out without the presence of the detained apex leaders of the major two parties? Is the government ready for it? Will it be ready to free these leaders on parole for facilitating them to attend the dialogue process for the greater interest of the country'? However, the best thing is to leave the Issue of any national charter for the next parliament. Any command or pre-designed charter for national consensus will not be acceptable, at least, to the people of this country.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and do not anyway reflect the views of this paper. The writer is a freelance scribe. He can be reached at [email protected]
The question arises about the objectivity of such a national charter. No doubt, for transforming sick and turbulent political arena of the country into a healthy and stable one, consensus on different issues among the political parties is a must. The people of the country want to see a qualitative change in politics in line with true democratic ethos. For this, the present corrupt political culture must be changed. Here the term 'corrupt political culture' does not point to only the financial corruption. Rather in this case ideological corruption should be considered first. In fact, ideological corruption is the root of all sorts of corruption including financial one. Unfortunately, most of the major political parties of the country are now suffering from the ideological corruption.
The erosion of ideology in political parties has not occurred in a day. In fact, if we look at history, it would become clear that such ideological erosion, indeed, has begun since the installation of undemocratic authoritarian regime at the power centre after the brutal killing of Bangabandhu. If we objectively analyse the political history of the country, then it will be found that the political party -- Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) -- which originated iii the 'otherwise restricted' area under the captainship of an authoritarian ruler is indeed devoid of any ideology. Its founder, a man in uniform turned into a politician, late president General Ziaur Rahman formed this party while he was at the centre of power and the only objective to form this platform was to legalise his tenure and hence to stay in power. So, he did not hesitate to include the politicians of different ideologies, starting from ultra-right to ultra left-segments of our political domain in this platform. Irony is that being a valiant freedom fighter, just to fulfil his political ambition, Zia showed little respect to the spirit of our liberation. In fact, it was Zia, who divided the nation into pro-liberation and anti-liberation groups by legalising communal politics in Bangladesh for his own political interest. He shrewdly translated his infamous utterance "I will make politics difficult for the politicians" into reality by dividing the nation into pro-and anti-liberation groups. By distorting our secular constitution grew out of the spirit of our war of liberation Zia re-established the communal politics in the independent Bangladesh. Perhaps, this was the worst ideological corruption of Zia and the people of the land are still suffering from this distortion of the constitution. Though president Zia was himself free from financial corruption, evidences suggest that massive financial massive election engineering and transforming the parliament into dysfunctional one stalled the democracy process during his regime.
After the death of President Zia, his successor President Sattar did not get enough time to show his credibility in politics, for within a short time he was ousted from power through an army coup led by president General Ershad. The authoritarian leader General Ershad followed the footstep of his predecessor and by introducing Islam as the state religion, he distorted our original constitution further. Besides, the Ershad era institutionalised financial corruption at the state level.
However, after the fall of the autocrat regime of General Ershad in 1990 through long mass movements, the people of the country looked forward to having a significant change in political arena of the country. But it never materialised. During the period of the first phase of Khaleda Zia's regime the ethos of parliamentary democracy were largely ignored. Even the major political party -- the Awami League (AL) -- during that period failed to act as a responsible opposition party in the framework of parliamentary democracy. Initial refusal of election result, calling of frequent ineffective hartals, and frequent boycott of parliament alienated the AL from the common people during that period. Besides, it also failed to uphold its secular ideological flag rightly. In this context, the AL's undeclared treaty with the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh, before 1996 election can be cited.
Though Sheikh Hasina's rule between 1996 and 2000 was relatively better in terms of many pro-people aspects (e.g. selection of nonpartisan, neutral president, maintaining low prices of essentials, water treaty with India, peace treaty for the Chittagong Hill Tracts), the dominance of muscleman and financial corruption was also highly traced during her period. Although the AL during that time tried to uphold some values of the parliamentary democracy, for instances the initiation of the question session for the Prime Minister, and the holding of regular meetings of different parliamentary sub-committees in decision making processes, the Jatiya Sangsad or parliament could not be transformed into an effective institution, due to total non-cooperation of the major opposition party, BNP. During this time, BNP followed the footstep of Awami League when the latter was in opposition and frequently boycotted parliamentary sessions and called for series of hartals creating public harassment.
Endless financial corruption and total ideological collapse have portrayed the last BNP-led coalition government as the worst one. At one stage, however, there was a popular belief that the BNP's leadership was no more in Khaleda Zia's hands. Especially, at the advent of the 2001 election, the shifting of leadership from the older generation of the BNP to the younger generation had been marked. Especially, after the Election 2001, the young group (also known as Young Turk) of the BNP led by Khaleda's son Tarique Zia based in 'Hawa Bhaban', virtually led the party in all aspects. Unfortunately, the members of this young group have no political ideology other than their own vested interest to loot public money using the state influence in every way. This young group centred at Hawa Bhaban, in fact, installed a parallel government during Khaleda's regime.
Perhaps the dangerous ethical corruption of the alliance government was nurturing extremist groups with a view to utilising them against their political opponents. Politicisation of public institutions like public service commission, election commission, police department, judiciary and the secretariats was objectively and purposefully done during this period. Even after the transition of power to the caretaker government headed by Professor Iazuddin Ahmed, the Hawa Bhaban controlled the administration with the design of election engineering. However, the AL as a major opposition political party failed to carry out its responsibilities during this period also. It failed to fight for the people in the contemporary contexts. As for example, during that period, the AL could successfully organise the people to fulfil their popular demands -- tackling electricity crisis, water crisis, price-hikes, monga etc. On the contrary, from the beginning of the formation of the alliance government, the only agenda that had been adopted by Hasina's AL was just to topple the government by any means. Perhaps the AL's major ethical corruption came out in the open during the period of Professor Iazuddin's caretaker government when it signed a treaty with Khelafat Majlis, with a view to forming a grand electoral alliance against the BNP-led alliance.
On top of these, the ideological bankruptcy of both the AL and the BNP was highlighted when both of them wanted to fetch former president Ershad under the banner of their respective alliances. Besides, the use of black money and muscleman and trades in nominating candidates for the election were marked as the common features for all of the major parties.
The essence of the above account may identify some negative attributes of our political domain as stated below: a) ideological corruption, b) rise of communal politics, c) financial corruption, d) intolerance among the political parties, e) use of muscleman and black money in the electoral process and election engineering, f) undermining parliamentary ethos and making the parliament dysfunctional, g) nurturing extremism and political hooligans. h) politicisation of public institutions, and i) calling for frequent but ineffective hartals.
However, the people of the country really want to get rid of the above stated curses in our political arena because at the end of the day, politics controls all the spheres of life. For this, the political parties must reach a consensus. But the point is whether the caretaker government has any right -- moral or legal -- to initiate any national charter for consensus.
The effort of the incumbent caretaker government, in view of its constitutional footing, is likely to face a legal controversy in the future. Can such an important charter be chalked out without the presence of the detained apex leaders of the major two parties? Is the government ready for it? Will it be ready to free these leaders on parole for facilitating them to attend the dialogue process for the greater interest of the country'? However, the best thing is to leave the Issue of any national charter for the next parliament. Any command or pre-designed charter for national consensus will not be acceptable, at least, to the people of this country.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and do not anyway reflect the views of this paper. The writer is a freelance scribe. He can be reached at [email protected]