by M. Serajul Islam 18 December 2023
The United Nations once again turned down the Election Commission’s offer to send an observer team for the January 7 general election. The United Nations has no reason to do so for many reasons with the AL regime’s admission to the media that it will field ‘dummy’ candidates in the election as a strategy.
The regime explained that the dummy candidates would be the Awami League leaders who would participate in the election with its approval as independent candidates. The Awami League adopted the surreal dummy candidate strategy to avoid another election like 2014 when there were no candidates in 153 of the 300 seats in the national assembly, which made the 2014 election not only outright controversial but also a shame for the country.
The dummy candidate strategy came after the regime had failed to break the Bangladesh Nationalist Party into the so-called king’s parties through fear, force and bribe like the politicians and the political parties were up for bidding in a cattle auction. The law enforcement agencies working for the ruling party failed to bring even a handful from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to the king’s parties like the Trinamool BNP, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or the BNM, and the Bangladesh Supreme Party, or the BSP.
The ruling party is now ‘shopping’ for the opposition party in the next parliament. The Jatiya Party, not even a shadow of the party that the Indian foreign secretary Sujata Singh arm-twisted to participate in and give credibility to the 2014 election by a visit to Dhaka, is the only party in the fray that voters know by name. The Awami League is negotiating with it openly with bribe and seats. The Jatiya Party is now playing hard to get aware because the ruling party needs it desperately after the failure of the king’s parties and the dummy candidate strategy.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has, meanwhile, been locked up, literally, since the October 28 crackdown on it with no holds barred. Its top leaders, including secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, have been jailed with 20,000 leaders and activists. Several of them have died in custody. The police in cahoots with AL activists have driven the BNP leaders from their home. They are now targeting their families, thus closing for the BNP all democratic space of protest except blockade and general strike that it can use without facing the police and the AL activists and risking their freedom and life.
These strategies worked in the past. In the 1991–96 term of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the Awami League with the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jatiya Party as allies adopted these strategies successfully in forcing the BNP to accept their demand, which is ironically what the BNP is demanding now, namely that the general election must be held under the caretaker government system. The Awami League demanded the caretaker government system forever.
The 1991–96 AL-JP-Jamaat movement witnessed 173 days of the general strike. The movement was violent, unlike the BNP’s present movement which has generally been peaceful. The AL-Jamaat-JP movement brought Sir Ninian Stephen, Australia’s retired governor general, to Dhaka as the special envoy of Sir Sridhat Rampal, the Commonwealth secretary general, to negotiate an end to the violence triggered by the trio. The BNP regime in 1991–96 treated the trio, in particular the Awami League, humanely in sharp contrast to the inhuman treatment it is now receiving at the hands of the AL regime.
Yet, a leading English daily surprisingly carried a commentary raising questions about the BNP’s ongoing movement in one of its recent editions. It was critical of the BNP’s blockades. The daily newspaper was in denial of the fact that it is the BNP-led movement that alone stands between the country becoming a one-party regime like Russia as an antithesis to the state for which hundreds of thousands embraced martyrdom in 1971. The BNP has kept alive the spirit of 1971 against the same type of oppression that the Awami League faced in 1971 and, at the first signs of it, decided to take shelter in India.
The English daily newspaper also failed to consider what is now obvious to all and sundry at home and abroad that the event that Habibul Awal, the chief election commissioner, is preparing as the general election on January 7, will neither be a general election nor a free, fair and participatory one that the United States, the west and the United Nations want by any stretch of imagination. It will not be general because it will be for the Awami League and its allies and those who are willing to sell their souls for a price. The social media has, thus, aptly described the Election Commission’s January 7 event as one between ‘amra and mamura’, or between us and our uncles.
The daily newspaper has, thus, attempted to divert a genuine movement for the human, political and civil rights of people towards uncharted territories by questioning the party leading the movement for these rights. The newspaper in question has, however, a chequered past. It was, with another leading Bangla daily newspaper, directly involved in the infamous minus-two formula to replace the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League with the creation of the so-called king’s parties during the 2007–2008 emergency.
The English newspaper was also in denial of the BNP’s current position in Bangladesh’s politics. It is now more united and stronger than ever in its history despite the ruling party’s determined efforts to break and dismantle it since the assumption of office in 2009. By all accounts except those of the Awami League, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party will win a general election by a landslide. Badruddin Umar, Bangladesh’s most respected elder political analyst, repeated such an outcome a few times recently.
A general election in Bangladesh today without the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is like attempting to stage Hamlet without the prince of Denmark. The mega mess now prevailing over the next general election will vanish like magic the moment the BNP decides to participate. The festive mood of a general election that the Bangladesh foreign secretary assured diplomats concurrently accredited to Bangladesh during his recent visit to India is, meanwhile, conspicuous by its absence. The mood in the ruling party of celebrating December as the month of liberation is also conspicuously missing.
Bangladesh is suffocating because of human, political and civil rights deficits of its people. The possibility of economic sanctions by the United States, the west and the United Nations over the Election Commission’s January 7 event is hanging over Bangladesh as the proverbial Damocles’ sword. The economy is on its knees and the plight of ordinary folks is unbearable. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party is leading the struggle of the people against these deficits and difficulties.
The mainstream media have been one of the biggest disappointments for people in their struggle for their human, political and civil rights. The majority in the mainstream media has willingly become the regime’s sycophants while some toed its political line to survive. The English daily newspaper that encouraged this piece has chosen to criticise the Bangladesh Nationalist Party without considering the odds against it and the objectives for which it is fighting without suggesting any way out.
The BNP’s blockade strategy is causing difficulties for the people. Ironically, this also underlines that the movement has not stopped and working. The BNP is using blockades to keep its movement from coming to a halt because of the AL regime’s crackdown since October 28 in the same manner as the Congress had used its locomotion strategy to keep its movement against the British from coming to a halt at times of similar crackdowns.
The United States has, meanwhile, imposed targeted sanctions on 300 Guatemalan lawmakers, private-sector leaders and their families for ‘undermining democracy and the rule of law’. The Guatemalan-targeted sanctions are against those who have for long ‘yielded power and have obstructed’ the progressive Bernardo Arevalo from taking office as president in January through an election held freely and fairly. This is a signal that the leaders of the AL regime can ignore only at their peril because the same fate will befall them if they undermine a free, fair, peaceful, and participatory general election in the country.
Postscript: The United Nations’ repeated rejection to send election observers and the US-targeted sanctions on Guatemala are red flags for the Awami League to reject the Election Commission’s January 7 election.
M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.