View from the brink
The stands of the two alliances are far apart, but they hold the same view; that a failure will lead to national crisis.
It is comforting in a sense that the two contending alliances have a clear perception of the consequences that will follow from a failure. This will not, however, produce any result without affirmative action.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The deadlock can be resolved. The two principal players, the Awami League and the BNP, know it well that it can be. Bangladesh will have to carry on with democracy because this is the only sensible option for the country.
So long as these two do business with each other, as all good partners to a process should, democracy can overcome any problem as and when it comes. The democratic process is a shared task, not an autocratic exercise of absolute will. The right to govern may be a singular privilege, but its exercise is best served by dialogue.
A democratic system has a parliament because the need for multilateral dialogue is at its centre. A heartening camaraderie and unanimity marked the country's return to parliamentary democracy. But it ended in a bitter legacy of mistrust and stubbornness over the caretaker government. That rendered dialogue into an ineffectual tool among those who would have profited most by it.
Accord and compromise, the two vital elements of dialogue, are seen as instruments of capitulation. That is at the core of our political crisis.
In the last 15 years, both the Awami League and the BNP have suffered on account of their inability to see their vindication in dialogue. BNP's performance was by far the best in its first term, according to all the indexes. Yet, it lost the election in 1996. It did not see the wisdom of wholeheartedly joining the rest of the parties in working out the caretaker government formula through a successful dialogue.
They muddled into early polls, a farcical one at that. Ultimately conceding to the caretaker government demand in an ignominious manner saw its ouster. A successful dialogue could have been a good beginning to emulate.
The Awami League also did not show much faith in the usefulness of dialogue when it was in power. Instead, it drove the BNP onto the streets, and went to polls in 2001 with great nonchalance.
Unfortunately, the BNP also did not learn from its first term. This time it acted in a manner as if its large mandate had given it all the legitimacy in the world to do anything without sincerely engaging a party whose seat strength had been drastically reduced.
In the beginning it appeared from the salutary tones of Mrs. Zia's maiden address that BNP had embarked on a sincere course of national harmony through dialogue and constructive engagement. Professor Badrudozza's ouster brought BNP back to the familiar imperial stance.
All through the second term BNP gave the impression that its two-thirds majority would translate into another term. Here was the time for uniting the country, and BNP was to take the lead. Instead, it squandered the opportunity in a display of aloofness, and disinterest in engaging the major opposition.
The partnership would have been very useful in building the two vital national institutions -- the Parliament and the Election Commission. Sadly, our political parties view partnership with the opponent as an erosion of their eminence. The art of the possible that we know as politics cannot take place without give and take.
BNP embarked on a course of crafting an election combine of its own to contest the next election. They did what others had done in the past. The difference was, however, in quality. True, M. A. Saeed the CEC at the last polls was from Gopalganj, but he carried with him the excellence and experience of a successful bureaucrat.
Justice M.A. Aziz, on the other hand, was a disappointment, prone to bumbling histrionics. He started muddling things up with incremental regularity. It was indiscreet to plan things in such a manner that a person of Justice K.M. Hassan's partisan past was to become the chief adviser. These decisions made the road to the national polls a doomsday ride.
A handpicked president was the unlikeliest of choices for the office of chief adviser. Professor Iazuddin is handicapped by a partisan profile. It is natural that he will falter, and he is faltering, caught between the consciousness of not reneging on his patrons and the demands of the duty.
His best intentions, hampered by constraints, are not producing results. The political crisis before us is the sum total of the failure of the two political parties. They have not been able to build the Parliament, the Election Commission and the office of the president into institutions of national support. The parties' invasion of these institutions has been at the cost of the democratic build up of the country.
We are witnessing a groundswell of popular disenchantment with the two political parties. This disenchantment has definite grounds. The widely held resentment holds the two parties liable for unbridled appetite and greed for power. Power is used as a licence for plunder and mindless acrimony, and it is the people that bear the cost of this unscrupulous pursuit. Understandably, their political conduct, driven by mistrust, intolerance and contempt only breeds misery and hardship.
Of the two leaders, one speaks of establishing the right to vote and to get food, and the other says that the people are the source of all power. It is in the nature of things that a need that involves the lives of millions never goes unanswered for all time. Alternative sources spring up to fill the need. That is a prospect that may render the political parties into endangered species. There is no dearth of such examples in this world.
Every system must have backup support if it is to survive the test of time. The nation should return to making the president a true guardian of the country. It is, again, the mistrust and the fears of our political parties that have come to the fore in making the president a mere figurehead.
The office of the prime minister has been given all the powers to make it a prime ministerial form of government. In the process our political parties have forgotten that the president is the unifying symbol of the sovereign powers of the state and the solidarity of the people.
It is the lesson of the times that a respectable degree of power should be returned to the president. The election commission and the judiciary can be well served under the president. We can also do well to think about an upper house of the Parliament so that the country may not have to return to the brink again.