by M. Serajul Islam 22 December 2023
KAZI Raquibuddin Ahmed, who was the chief election commissioner during the 10th national elections in 2014, allowed 154 Awami League candidates to win uncontested in the 300-seat national assembly. He was aware of such an outcome on the last date for the withdrawal of nomination, a few weeks before the polling day. He allowed the election to be held, nevertheless, keeping to the Machiavellian dictum that end justifies means because he wanted the Awami League to retain power at any cost.
Kazi Habibul Awal, who is now the chief election commissioner, is allowing another preposterous national election, the 12th, for the same Machiavellian dictum, to ensure the Awami League’s return to power. He has, thus, allowed the Awami League to take control of the election. On December 17, three weeks before the polling day for the forthcoming election, which was also the last day for the withdrawal of nomination, the Awami League went public and ‘managed’ its ‘outcome’. The ruling party ‘decided’ to ‘take’ 262 seats and ‘give’ 26 seats to the Jatiya Party to ‘make’ it the opposition party.
The ruling party used one of the government’s coercive organisations to ensure the Jatiya Party’s continued commitment to the Awami League’s December 17 seat-sharing arrangements. The Awami League expects that people would legitimise its election deal on January 7 in a ‘free, fair, and participatory’ general election. The foreign minister AKA Momen is confident that the US-led west and the United Nations will accept the January 7 election as a ‘model election’.
The Awami League has not been magnanimous towards its erstwhile 14-party alliance in the election deal. It ‘gave’ the alliance partners just six seats, individually. It made once mighty political stalwarts such as Rashed Khan Menon and Hasanul Huq Inu, in the words of a pro-Awami League intellectual and a retired professor, plead for their seats like ‘political beggars’ to join the Jatiya Party members to ‘loot and plunder’ as members of the next parliament.
There was, nevertheless, some divine justice in the Awami League’s bizarre seat-sharing politics. It left people such as Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury, Taimur Alam Khandker, etc, in the lurch. They had sold their souls to the Awami League on its promise that it would help them to create and lead the so-called king’s parties by breaking the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and becoming its official opposition in the next parliament. The Awami League dropped these characters like hot potatoes because they failed to make even the slightest dent in the BNP’s unity, let alone break it. The characters, instead, have rightly earned for themselves the despicable Mir Jafar titles.
Meanwhile, the press interview of Abdur Razzak, a senior minister and Awami League presidium member, that the arrest of top BNP leaders and 20,000 activists was a pre-conceived plan, gave another twist to the Awami League’s bizarre politics. The minister also stated in the interview that the Awami League had offered to release the BNP leaders and activists en masse if it agreed to participate in the election. He, thus, naively admitted that the Awami League’s October 28 crackdown and mass arrests were also planned to stop the Bangladesh Nationalist Party from enforcing general strike. He ‘demanded’ credit for the regime because these allowed people to move freely on the streets.
Incredibly, such an important minister of the Awami League regime failed to realise that arresting people based on simple assumptions and, that too, in such a large number right before a general election would be considered illegal and criminal even in a kangaroo’s court. The minister’s claim that the Awami League regime also offered to release the 20,000 BNP leaders and activists ‘in an hour’ was equally weird and unacceptable unless the minister believed that the regime’s powers were divinely ordained.
Unfortunately for the minister, independent and credible sources have contradicted and trashed his claim that the regime was justified in arresting the 20,000 BNP leaders and activists to allow people to move freely on the streets. The sources have blamed the regime with visual evidence gathered in real-time ‘violent instances engineered in Dhaka by Awami League and Chhatra League supporters acting in cahoots with the police and other law enforcement agencies, long before the Bangladesh Election Commission issued the election notification schedule on November 15.’ The finger has also been pointed at these elements for the attack on the chief justice’s residence as a pretext that was used for the crackdown on the BNP on October 28 and thereafter.
The minister’s strange interview exposed a frame of mind that many who are not Awami League supporters believe it has, the mindset of acting in politics as both the judge and the jury that is an anathema to the concept of the rule of law. He unwittingly established the BNP’s case against his party as the king’s witness better than the Bangladesh Nationalist Party could have done or imagined. The minister’s outlandish interview was, therefore, too much for even the Awami League to digest. The Awami League’s general secretary Obaidul Qader has, thus, disowned the minister’s views as being ‘personal’. The minister, nevertheless, did not admit his massive error. He doubled down, instead.
These facts, nevertheless, flagged once more the eerie and absurd state of the Awami League’s politics. The party’s decision to field ‘dummy’ candidates in the forthcoming national election to fool stakeholders abroad, distribute seats for the 12th national assembly three weeks before the polling day and Razzak’s bizarre interview taken together also reflect a great malaise in the once mighty Awami League that could see it meet the same fate that the Muslim League that had led Pakistan’s independence met eventually in the independent Pakistan.
The Awami League’s role in politics has been based on its leadership of the liberation war that was fought for human rights, democracy and the right of people to change their government without fear or favour. It started the liberation war after Pakistan’s military regime had invalidated the December 1970 election through which the people of Bangladesh elected the Awami League by a landslide victory to form the government in Islamabad. The same Awami League regime has taken away people’s right to vote twice already, in 2014 and 2018. It is now preparing to do the same, in a manner worse than the last two instances.
The Awami League regime has already been under US sanctions on human rights and democracy. The United States, its western allies and the United Nations have also flagged their interest in a free, fair and participatory general election and warned the regime of consequences if it chose to the contrary. The regime has, however, thrown their concern to the winds in its desperation for a fourth term, the Machiavellian way. This has, unwittingly perhaps, opened Pandora’s box about its role as the flagbearer of the spirit of 1971.
The Awami League is, thus, in more troubled waters than it cares to admit. The January 7 election will be a far cry from the utterly controversial 2014 and equally absurd 2018 elections. It will be an election of the Awami League, by the Awami League and for the Awami League. It will leave the US-led west and the United Nations with no choice but to use their undoubted powers to react the way they would need to protect their interests and their pride. Bangladesh may, therefore, be looking at the barrel of the gun.
Postscript: Minister Abdur Razzak’s interview flagged the danger of believing the Awami League regime without the burden of proof. Many, thus, did not believe the regime’s claim without proof that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was responsible for the recent torching of the trains and arson. The regime’s seat-sharing drama reminded many of the story of the clever monkey dividing the bread.
M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.
The article was published in The New Age.