Banglar Bir
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Image of the nation in a limbo
Shahid Islam
An erudite crisis of credibility had plagued Bangladesh to further alert its people and the observers abroad about the volatility of a lingering political crisis; infested with Islamic militants busy in making and stocking bombs and other lethal means to wage their struggle, according to police and RAB who create such news almost daily by raiding what they call the ‘dens of militants’ and providing the global media outlets the fodder to portray Bangladesh as the next Afghanistan in the making.
Besides, not only people within are gripped by the nauseating feeling of suffocation under the blanketed confusion sparked lately by the diverse and delirious missions and visions of the nation’s politicians, many foreign observers too seem convinced that the incumbent AL-led regime wants to stay in power for four consecutive terms to fulfil its ‘development mission,’ as was reiterated by the ruling party secretary general, Obaidul Qader, on May 16.
Reckless regime
Qader’s latest ‘vision statement’ entailed the clearest signal yet to show why the next general election is as yet an uncertainty and, the ruling oligarchs are least bothered about how they cling onto power for four consecutive terms. They have already proved during the botched 2014 election that their aim justifies all means and abstention from the poll of other parties hardly tickle them, let alone inflict pain.
To the ordinary folks, the BNP’s avowed decision not to participate in an election under the incumbent PM and her regime brings home a similar message of another inevitable turbulence hitting the national politics and the economy. Amidst this frustration and confusion, the image of the nation is vaulted to what seems like an irretrievable limbo.
The messages of uncertainty so transmitted are deterring investors from investing, traders to resorting to holding, and the ordinary people to losing the residual of the hopes they still nurture within. Combined, the effect is contributing to further dampening of national spirit and sprouting of more vulnerabilities to enable the nation’s competitors and saboteurs within to stall the rising trajectory of growth and prosperity.
A day is a long time in politics, so goes the rationale behind emitting inspirational signals each day to entice the forces of economy to charge ahead, and the society at large to feel the pulse of stability of a kind that can infuse courage, complacency and trust upon the status quo. That fundamental ethos of patriotic politics is very much amiss in today’s Bangladesh.
And, the erosion of such values occur at a time when more people are without job; export, remittance, industrial and agricultural outputs in decline; inflation turning runaway despite government data showing otherwise. Every consumer item had hiked in prices by over 20 per cent in last 40 days alone, according to reports.
Status quo perception
And that’s the perception which is neither supportive of the status quo, nor conducive to investment, growth and prosperity. Politics today is hostage to the idiosyncrasy of an oligarchy that claim exclusivity to winning the independence of the nation and an inalienable right to rule perpetually. The constitution of the nation may say and exhort as much as it likes about the necessity of governing through ‘elected representative of the people,’ elected every five years, the status quo under the ruling AL is, however, defined by its desire not to be distracted by such constitutional refrains and cling on to power indefinitely by any means. This is autocracy at its height and it creates more trouble than the regime can solve or handle.
The status quo also breeds an economy in which capital can be monopolized by the few, who also can send the capital abroad at will, as the latest report of the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) showed. “Bangladesh lost as much as $75.15 billion or Tk 700 billion to trade mis-invoicing and other unrecorded outflows between 2005 and 2014,” the report claimed.
‘Slap & kiss’ strategy
Politically, from local government to the national parliament through to the cabinet, government and the opposition are fishes of same breed and, the main opposition party, BNP, is not even allowed to converge for a public meeting. One is prone to wonder what strategy keeps the regime insulated from the threats that usually lurk against any government of this nature. The strategy is ‘slap & kiss.’ The BNP and Jamaat have been slapped hard; radical left and the Hefajati Islamists bought off; and the civil-military bureaucracy reduced to perpetual reconciliation and numbness through graft, garnish and mild doses of gratitude.
Status quo also implies high-budgeted, hefty development works that can feed milk and honey to the decision makers, contractors foreign and local, as well as to local party loyalists. Real cost of most of the development and infrastructural projects in Bangladesh is 50-200 per cent higher than all other regional countries. The brazen lack of accountability is another boon of the status quo for those aligned with the incumbent.
But this is a nation getting lawless by the day where today’s benefactors are bound to be tomorrow’s losers. According to the country’s chief justice, judicial independence is encumbered by and hostage to the executive while police can make believe anything; including turning a peaceable ordinary person into a ferocious jihadi terrorist. In the absence of no other independent witness when militant dens are raided, whatever police say must be believed. The pattern shows police have a list to kill, and kill with impunity. This has turned the country into a death camp; the victims dying without being accorded the due diligence of law.
Vision 2030
Amidst this grisly reality, the BNP’s vision 2030 makes a lot of sense if the architects of the vision can snatch political power to implement the blueprint. If they fail, which is the main mission of the AL, the so called ‘Awami missionaries’ will cling onto power with the help of the civil-military bureaucracy and a regional power that practices and professes democracy within but sheds no tears if a neighbourly regime serves its purpose irrespective of being or not being elected representative of the people. This unabashed double standard of this comparatively powerful neighbour has been emulated in ditto by the ruling AL that had climbed to power using the caretaker ladder only to through the ladder off to deprive its opponent.
Whether BNP goes to power or not in the near future, the proposed balancing of power between the president and the prime minister, delving into the prospect of a bicameral legislature, being supportive of the millions hoping for jobs across the country, repelling the Special Power Act of 1974, making the judiciary truly independent and based on merit-based judges are among many visions that the BNP had laid out for posterity.
The ruling oligarchs are fazed by the substantive and the thematic punches of the BNP’s visions, but their main strategy being not to budge on the question of a poll-time, all-party government under a devised dispensation that can be construed as extra-constitutional, they are not bothered much.
Perilous deadlock
And, the ball being in the government’s court, the denial of yet another fair and inclusive election will bring the existential deadlock to its dreadful precipice. That will be the moment to put on test the courage and the commitment of the nation’s civil society and the intelligentsia who shall stand for real democracy, not against it.
For another election without the BNP’s participation will be as disastrous for the country as a hapless farmer’s crops damage in two consecutive harvests. That political famine will also lead to inevitable chaos and calamity of a kind to push more people underground. Make no mistake police now chase those who went underground in the aftermath of the brutality endured before and after 2014 election. And we warned.
Today, not only the people of Bangladesh are watching closely how patriotic are their leaders who so far had shown much disdain to resolving differences through dialogue, the global observers are also relentless in demanding an inclusive election sooner. Prior to the January 2014 election, the UN Secretary General had dispatched his good offices to bring together the BNP and the AL, without any success. So did other development partners. The world then overlooked the AL’s re-capture of power in an election won without contest as a one off aberration. No more it shall, and will.
The UN said in a dispatch on January 6, 2014 that “Bangladeshi citizens were denied a genuine opportunity to exercise their democratic franchise on Sunday January 5, as national elections marred by violence, boycott and political tensions overshadowed the vote.” Last week, a UN spokesperson once again reiterated its demand for an inclusive and fair election in Bangladesh.
It’s time the government realises the risk it runs by insisting on holding another election without BNP’s participation, and the BNP asking something that cannot be rationally and constitutionally reconciled. Meanwhile, alarming messages from both the quarters and the security forces’ extra judicial killings are conflating the portrait of a nation on the verge of implosion.
Shahid Islam
An erudite crisis of credibility had plagued Bangladesh to further alert its people and the observers abroad about the volatility of a lingering political crisis; infested with Islamic militants busy in making and stocking bombs and other lethal means to wage their struggle, according to police and RAB who create such news almost daily by raiding what they call the ‘dens of militants’ and providing the global media outlets the fodder to portray Bangladesh as the next Afghanistan in the making.
Besides, not only people within are gripped by the nauseating feeling of suffocation under the blanketed confusion sparked lately by the diverse and delirious missions and visions of the nation’s politicians, many foreign observers too seem convinced that the incumbent AL-led regime wants to stay in power for four consecutive terms to fulfil its ‘development mission,’ as was reiterated by the ruling party secretary general, Obaidul Qader, on May 16.
Reckless regime
Qader’s latest ‘vision statement’ entailed the clearest signal yet to show why the next general election is as yet an uncertainty and, the ruling oligarchs are least bothered about how they cling onto power for four consecutive terms. They have already proved during the botched 2014 election that their aim justifies all means and abstention from the poll of other parties hardly tickle them, let alone inflict pain.
To the ordinary folks, the BNP’s avowed decision not to participate in an election under the incumbent PM and her regime brings home a similar message of another inevitable turbulence hitting the national politics and the economy. Amidst this frustration and confusion, the image of the nation is vaulted to what seems like an irretrievable limbo.
The messages of uncertainty so transmitted are deterring investors from investing, traders to resorting to holding, and the ordinary people to losing the residual of the hopes they still nurture within. Combined, the effect is contributing to further dampening of national spirit and sprouting of more vulnerabilities to enable the nation’s competitors and saboteurs within to stall the rising trajectory of growth and prosperity.
A day is a long time in politics, so goes the rationale behind emitting inspirational signals each day to entice the forces of economy to charge ahead, and the society at large to feel the pulse of stability of a kind that can infuse courage, complacency and trust upon the status quo. That fundamental ethos of patriotic politics is very much amiss in today’s Bangladesh.
And, the erosion of such values occur at a time when more people are without job; export, remittance, industrial and agricultural outputs in decline; inflation turning runaway despite government data showing otherwise. Every consumer item had hiked in prices by over 20 per cent in last 40 days alone, according to reports.
Status quo perception
And that’s the perception which is neither supportive of the status quo, nor conducive to investment, growth and prosperity. Politics today is hostage to the idiosyncrasy of an oligarchy that claim exclusivity to winning the independence of the nation and an inalienable right to rule perpetually. The constitution of the nation may say and exhort as much as it likes about the necessity of governing through ‘elected representative of the people,’ elected every five years, the status quo under the ruling AL is, however, defined by its desire not to be distracted by such constitutional refrains and cling on to power indefinitely by any means. This is autocracy at its height and it creates more trouble than the regime can solve or handle.
The status quo also breeds an economy in which capital can be monopolized by the few, who also can send the capital abroad at will, as the latest report of the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) showed. “Bangladesh lost as much as $75.15 billion or Tk 700 billion to trade mis-invoicing and other unrecorded outflows between 2005 and 2014,” the report claimed.
‘Slap & kiss’ strategy
Politically, from local government to the national parliament through to the cabinet, government and the opposition are fishes of same breed and, the main opposition party, BNP, is not even allowed to converge for a public meeting. One is prone to wonder what strategy keeps the regime insulated from the threats that usually lurk against any government of this nature. The strategy is ‘slap & kiss.’ The BNP and Jamaat have been slapped hard; radical left and the Hefajati Islamists bought off; and the civil-military bureaucracy reduced to perpetual reconciliation and numbness through graft, garnish and mild doses of gratitude.
Status quo also implies high-budgeted, hefty development works that can feed milk and honey to the decision makers, contractors foreign and local, as well as to local party loyalists. Real cost of most of the development and infrastructural projects in Bangladesh is 50-200 per cent higher than all other regional countries. The brazen lack of accountability is another boon of the status quo for those aligned with the incumbent.
But this is a nation getting lawless by the day where today’s benefactors are bound to be tomorrow’s losers. According to the country’s chief justice, judicial independence is encumbered by and hostage to the executive while police can make believe anything; including turning a peaceable ordinary person into a ferocious jihadi terrorist. In the absence of no other independent witness when militant dens are raided, whatever police say must be believed. The pattern shows police have a list to kill, and kill with impunity. This has turned the country into a death camp; the victims dying without being accorded the due diligence of law.
Vision 2030
Amidst this grisly reality, the BNP’s vision 2030 makes a lot of sense if the architects of the vision can snatch political power to implement the blueprint. If they fail, which is the main mission of the AL, the so called ‘Awami missionaries’ will cling onto power with the help of the civil-military bureaucracy and a regional power that practices and professes democracy within but sheds no tears if a neighbourly regime serves its purpose irrespective of being or not being elected representative of the people. This unabashed double standard of this comparatively powerful neighbour has been emulated in ditto by the ruling AL that had climbed to power using the caretaker ladder only to through the ladder off to deprive its opponent.
Whether BNP goes to power or not in the near future, the proposed balancing of power between the president and the prime minister, delving into the prospect of a bicameral legislature, being supportive of the millions hoping for jobs across the country, repelling the Special Power Act of 1974, making the judiciary truly independent and based on merit-based judges are among many visions that the BNP had laid out for posterity.
The ruling oligarchs are fazed by the substantive and the thematic punches of the BNP’s visions, but their main strategy being not to budge on the question of a poll-time, all-party government under a devised dispensation that can be construed as extra-constitutional, they are not bothered much.
Perilous deadlock
And, the ball being in the government’s court, the denial of yet another fair and inclusive election will bring the existential deadlock to its dreadful precipice. That will be the moment to put on test the courage and the commitment of the nation’s civil society and the intelligentsia who shall stand for real democracy, not against it.
For another election without the BNP’s participation will be as disastrous for the country as a hapless farmer’s crops damage in two consecutive harvests. That political famine will also lead to inevitable chaos and calamity of a kind to push more people underground. Make no mistake police now chase those who went underground in the aftermath of the brutality endured before and after 2014 election. And we warned.
Today, not only the people of Bangladesh are watching closely how patriotic are their leaders who so far had shown much disdain to resolving differences through dialogue, the global observers are also relentless in demanding an inclusive election sooner. Prior to the January 2014 election, the UN Secretary General had dispatched his good offices to bring together the BNP and the AL, without any success. So did other development partners. The world then overlooked the AL’s re-capture of power in an election won without contest as a one off aberration. No more it shall, and will.
The UN said in a dispatch on January 6, 2014 that “Bangladeshi citizens were denied a genuine opportunity to exercise their democratic franchise on Sunday January 5, as national elections marred by violence, boycott and political tensions overshadowed the vote.” Last week, a UN spokesperson once again reiterated its demand for an inclusive and fair election in Bangladesh.
It’s time the government realises the risk it runs by insisting on holding another election without BNP’s participation, and the BNP asking something that cannot be rationally and constitutionally reconciled. Meanwhile, alarming messages from both the quarters and the security forces’ extra judicial killings are conflating the portrait of a nation on the verge of implosion.
