Credit: Prothom Alo
Shahid Islam 23 September 2018
The national cherry blossom festival in the Washington DC usually takes place between March and April each year; depending on the full blossom of these throbbing, eye-catching flowers. But many politicians from around the world cherish a dream to be showered by Washington’s blessing all around the year; especially when their going goes tougher in the internal, internecine squabbling of one kind or the other.
Road to Washington
This is another election time in Bangladesh. The nation is flushed with bougainvillea and krishnochura, not the cherries of the Washington vintage. But dashing to the Washington DC by our politicians remains a prerequisite to using the UN as a mediator to settle scores and discords in home politics. BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul had just finished such a jaunt to the DC and the UN headquarters in New York to inform the US and the UN that a fair, inclusive election in Bangladesh is well-nigh impossible under the incumbency of PM Sheikh Hasina, and the reasons thereof.
Fair enough. Dramas like this got orchestrated before every election since the inception of our nation. Barring the years until the death of Sheikh Mujib in 1975, Dhaka’s pro-Washington tilt has outlived the demise of the Cold War and the rising of China as a major global player. Washington is also indispensable for another reason, which former Libyan leader Colonel Qaddafi articulated quite aptly as “the UN means the US.”
That crisis anywhere calls for Washington’s interference is stitched to the US’s destiny. In February 1861, the Peace Congress of the delegates from 21 of the then 34 US states strove to avert what many saw as the US’s impending Civil War. They met in the city’s Willard Hotel. The strenuous effort failed and the War started in April 1861, only a month after Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th US President, and, like our assassinated leaders and war heroes, Lincoln, who led the US civil war, was assassination in April 1865.
UN’s electoral role
The UN itself is a brain-child of another US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who steered the adoption of the UN’s declaration on January 1, 1942, in the thick of the Second World War when representatives of 26 nations pledged to continue fighting together against the Axis Power.
The good old UN is now equipped with a political wing that houses election monitoring and assistance team within. Nations in the thick of internal crisis or civil war can call upon the UN’s help, albeit at the recommendation and approval of the mighty Security Council where big brothers decide the affairs of the others by approving, denying, or abstaining from voting a resolution.
Any election being an internal matter of individual nation-states, and Bangladesh not being under the cusp of a civil war of any sort (except verbally, so far), there is little hope that the UN can, or will, do much to impress upon the incumbent AL regime to pave ways for an inclusive election by holding it under a neutral regime that the combined opposition wants.
Jukto front
That combined opposition includes the newly formed joint alliance (jukto front). Before the 1954 legislative elections in the East Bengal, the very first since Pakistan became an independent country in 1947, a joint alliance of the opposition Awami League and the Krishak Sramik Party won a landslide victory with 223 of the 309 seats. Ever since efforts made by many opposition parties to emulate the 1954 model made little headway.
Now, two political heavyweights like Dr. Kamal Hossain and former president Barduddoza Chowdhury launched a copycat version of the same to dislodge the AL-led regime by emerging as a viable third force in the midst of irreconcilable stances of the two main political parties, the BNP and the AL. This too is a non-starter, though not a no-brainer; given that the vote banks for their respective parties (Gonoforum and bikolpodhara) are drench and dry of followers.
Enter Ershad
Oops! We forgot to name another major/minor player, named HM Ershad, who had ruled the nation from 1982-90 with an iron fist and bouncing speed. Since being dethroned by a mass upsurge in December 1991, he suffered prison terms and mercurial peculiarity of behavioral syndromes. He says one thing in the morning and changes that before the sunset. His Jatio Party is an official opposition in the existential parliament but has stakes in the cabinet where his nominees are ministers. These days, he aspires to regain power once again; although his age, demeanor and popularity are nowhere to match that craving.
Bewildered Islamists
We must not forget the political Islamists who enjoy third-largest popularity in the country, in terms of voting power and street hooliganism. They are of two main vintages; one faction wants an Islamic revolution of the Iranian denomination, the other wants to tread a democratic path to go to power. Amidst intense bashing from the law enforcers and the crumbling of their united desire to dislodge what they termed as ‘an infidel-inspired regime’, they all ducked into the oblivion.
There are reports and whispers that they are tied to some global networks of revolutionary Islamists, with an intent and preparation to re-activate their actions if the country finds itself drowned under the anarchy spewed by another botched election by the year’s end. Whether they can regroup and re-launch their so-called jihad is a matter of time, and space they find themselves in. For now, though, they remain a spent force for all intent and purpose. Most importantly, the largest faction of this behemoth, the Jamat-I-Islam, is barred from contesting the polls.
Praxis, popularity, and the constitutional crisis
Having inspected the jugular vein of the nation’s body politic, the surmise we can make is a bleak and bubonic one: The nation of Bangladesh is faced with a moral, political and constitutional crisis. In a fairly contested election, the BNP may emerge as the single largest political party, but it may not join the race unless its leader Khaleda Zia is released from prison, and elections are held under a neutral regime.
These two demands are unlikely to be met by the incumbent regime that is insistent on holding the election under the amended constitutional guidelines which have no provision of a poll-time neutral regime. At the best, it is willing to concede to a poll-time government from within the incumbency, something the opposition says is unconstitutional too. If the constitution has no solution to resolve the crisis, it certainly is a constitutional crisis. And, if the domestic consensus fails to resolve the crisis, it certainly brooks external intervention too.
Abandoned simplicity
These simple things are well understood by street vendors and lorry drivers, not the so-called leaders who run the affairs of the nation. They are cocooned in the shelf of their self-made fantasy world, obsessed by the glutted complacency that people still love them. The same fantasized obsession doesn’t allow other basic things to spread roots in this society.
For instance, almost half a century after gaining independence, the nation doesn’t have a rule book to hold an inclusive election; it doesn’t have traffic lights to regulate traffic flows in the street; no one queues in the malls to buy the essentials, excepting in some elite stores. Appointments, postings, and promotions are still on the basis of partisan loyalty and favoritism. And, bank loans are mostly based on powerful-lobby recommendations.
Devoid of the basics, the nation moves at its own peculiar pace; drivers drive at-wills, passers-by cross streets wherever they like. And, the politicians say and do whatever suits their individual, coterie and partisan interests.
Two-way traffic
That’s why the Washington DC looms so illuminatingly in the eyes of Bangladesh. It’s a cultural, as well as a political paradox. Or, may not be anymore. Dhaka and Washington are tied together like a Siamese Twin.
The PM’s son and grandchildren are US citizens, as are the sons and daughters of many others. They contribute hugely to the national economy by sending money and pulling away from the country more and more of their relatives through family sponsorship. The US houses thousands of political asylee and illegal Bangladeshi migrants, and, assists Bangladesh as a development partner.
There is little demeaning or degrading if the BNP secretary general visits Washington DC, or Washington comes to Dhaka. If someone doesn’t like that showmanship, that person should try and resolve Bangladesh’s internal crisis in a manner that forecloses the necessity to travel to the DC before every election; notwithstanding that the exercise itself throws a spanner on the notion of our sovereignty. Like or not, Uncle Sam still rules the roasts around the universe and, all roads still lead to the Washington DC.