I have come to this forum for several years. I have expressed my opinions and exchanged views with many. In the process I got somewhat carried away and started taking sides in our country politics. At times, I said many unkind words and took part in partisan bickering. Later I have come to regret some of my words and expressed opinions.
We have seen an Army take over a few years ago in 2007. We saw minus 2 formula then, which did not work. Sheikh Hasina came to power after the Army rule in an election in 2009. Then we saw a lot of changes. Lately there was an election in 2014 in which BNP/Jamat did not participate. We saw a lot of political disturbance since then, but things have quieted down now.
We saw that BNP/Jamat have pretty much lost its street power due to continued onslaught by the country's law enforcement agencies on their activists. We also saw how India has played a supportive role for AL to keep this party in power.
I open this thread to discuss with fellow forum members about future of Bangladesh politics, specially about the role of opposition political parties. I have some ideas of my own. I would like to share these ideas, hear ideas from others and open a discussion about the future.
The first idea I would like to discuss is the defeat of Khaleda Zia and how it may affect the future politics of Bangladesh. Since 1991, we have seen that both Khaleda and Hasina have been kind of evenly matched in their political muscle. The result have been parties led by them alternately being elected. But since this latest election, for the first time, Hasina has been in power for two consecutive terms. So this means that we are now at a new phase.
Although since 1991, we officially had democracy (we still do, officially), but all of us know that politics in Bangladesh have never really been fully democratic. Both major poltical parties are run by political dynastic families. These parties themselves have never been democratic in their internal affairs. And every time a party goes to power, they essentially operate like authoritarian dictators and start working to undermine their opponents as much as possible.
That said, since 1991 till a few years ago, the opposing parties did not cross some unwritten boundaries and had a mutual understanding not to cross these boundaries. In last 2 years, these boundaries I believe were done away with and the old rules were no longer followed. There could be many reasons for this. Ever since the killing of Sheikh Mujib in 1975, Indian influence in Bangladesh politics was not very significant. I believe what changed recently was that India became confident enough about its influence within Bangladesh to openly back AL and gave them a signal to break free from the earlier cycle. May be it took all these years for India to work and rebuild its influence within Bangladesh to reach this point.
In this new phase, starting with the latest election, with Indian help and support, AL led by Hasina have taken over reigns of power in Bangladesh. I believe we no longer have even the "imperfect democracy" we used to have earlier. I think many of us could not recognize this new phase at first and were shocked to see the new reality. But now that we know the new reality, how can we adjust and make the best of it, for the future of Bangladesh and its 160 million people? I would like to make the following observations and proposals:
1. Khaleda Zia and her son Tareq Zia are pretty much finished in Bangladesh politics for the foreseeable future
2. The political polarization of Bangladeshi population into two opposing camps have helped outsiders to gain influence and make infiltration and inroad into our country
3. Hasina and her son Joy are the new unofficial dynastic rulers of Bangladesh and they will remain in power for the foreseeable future
4. Bangladeshi people must become used to the above facts on the ground and consider that uniting under one leader and party will eventually make that leader more effective, make them less worried about opposition from within the country and thus give them greater freedom not to depend on outside powers as much
So with this train of thought, I would like to propose that, for the sake of greater national interest, the opposition party workers and activists should switch their loyalty to Hasina led AL and thus make political disturbance a thing of the past for Bangladesh. Sure we may not have democracy for now and for the foreseeable future, but having democracy is not the be all and end all specially for an underdeveloped poor country like Bangladesh. Without political disturbance the country can achieve growth more quickly and easily. One party system worked wonders for development in many Asian Tiger economies and in China.
About India, since India and AL are very close, this means that Bangladesh relations with India will remain strong for the foreseeable future and this may not be a bad thing for Bangladesh. This could be a opportunity to resolve all outstanding issues with our closest neighbor nation and thus make this relationship work for Bangladeshi economy and people.
Considering the prevailing global situation, this is also the time to take stock of Islamic militancy and extremism problem within our Muslim population. We need to make a comprehensive study of all Islamic organizations within Bangladesh to see the ideas and ideologies that has made inroads within Bangladesh. Traditionally 99.9% of our Muslim population belong to the tolerant Hanafi Sunni sect. We need to find out the extent of spread of Wahhabism, Salafism as well as political Islam or Islamism. All of these are intimately tied with extremism and terrorism. Only through careful study we will be able to find the extent of infiltration of these ideas and then we will be able to take counter measures to stop the spread and eventually remove these toxic and deviant ideas from our Muslim population.
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You should have become a TTA long back, but then.....!
