The landslide victory of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) at Thursday’s election in Bangladesh has given citizens the satisfaction of knowing that the danger of a Jamaat-e-Islami takeover of the country has been averted.
An important factor in the return of the BNP to the heights, besides the vast support it has traditionally commanded among its followers, has been the significant segment of votes it was able to garner from Awami League followers and other secular elements driven by the colossal need to prevent the Jamaat from coming to power.
And there is the gaping truth that the election was controversial in light of the ban imposed by the unconstitutional Yunus regime on the Awami League.
One will easily imagine the situation had the Awami League been permitted to participate in the election.
Tareque Rahman and his colleagues in the BNP will certainly realise that in an election resting on controversy, they have won public support by default. That support was crucial if a further slide into Islamist extremism was to be halted.
For the BNP, there is certainly a huge degree of satisfaction in returning to power twenty years after its last government went out of office in October 2006.
Much water has flowed under the bridge in all this time, which again is a cautionary signal for the party.
The caution relates to the manner and modalities by which it can conduct itself again in power. The party will be called on to administer a country that has undergone vast changes in the past two decades.
The decisive victory of the party enjoins on its leadership the responsibility of ensuring that its activists and supporters refrain from acts that could be a sad reminder of the violence they resorted to soon after the BNP beat the Awami League at the election in 2001.
Bangladesh needs an atmosphere of peace and stability, which the BNP, having won by a landslide, should be able to ensure.
The incoming BNP government will have its plate full where governance is concerned. Tareque Rahman, the party leader, has not had any governmental experience before.
A mere handful of party leaders served in the last government headed by his mother, Khaleda Zia, which is a broad hint that the current leadership, having led the party to electoral triumph, is in need of learning the ropes fast.
The new government has to hit the ground running, given the problems it will be inheriting from the Yunus dispensation.
But that presupposes a speedy transfer of power from the current regime to the BNP. Rahman and his colleagues should not be persuaded into thinking that they can take over only after the provisions of the so-called referendum voted on alongside the election come into force.
For the BNP, firmness of action is necessary here. It ought to be up to it and the new parliament to handle the referendum issue once the new government is sworn in, not before.
An issue likely to emerge pertains to the unhappiness of the Jamaat with the election results. The party has already made it known that it would like a vote recount in 150 of the 299 constituencies where voting took place on Thursday.
It is an early indication of the problems the Jamaat, which had begun to believe that it was on the cusp of gaining power, will cause for the BNP government. The country’s new leaders should give short shrift to the Jamaat’s complaints.
Knowing full well that their party romped to power in a non-inclusive election in which the Awami League, Bangladesh’s oldest and largest political party, was compelled into absence, the BNP leadership will realise that the responsibility of rebuilding the structure of democracy in the country will depend to a very large extent on its taking positive steps to have the Awami League return to the political stage through a lifting of the ban arbitrarily imposed on it by the Yunus regime.
The BNP will need the AL to beat back the assaults on it by the Jamaat and its NCP allies and others.
For its part, the Awami League, in the interest of its own future role in politics, must not spurn any positive gesture made to it by the BNP.
Governance also entails the issue of how prepared a new political dispensation is in handling the economy.
During the last eighteen months of the Yunus regime, Bangladesh’s economy has been pushed to the abyss. Garment factories by the hundreds have closed down, with thousands of workers laid off.
An unbridled rise in essential commodity prices has pushed the middle class towards impoverishment. Besides, reports of corruption indulged in by the members of the Yunus regime and their families and supporters will also require a thorough investigation.
In foreign policy, a necessary first step for the new government will be to repair the damage done to Bangladesh’s ties with India by Yunus and his regime.
PM Modi was among the first global leaders to welcome BNP victory – if not the first.
The recent visit to Dhaka by Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to convey to Tareque Rahman a message of condolence from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the death of Khaleda Zia was a hint of how the Indian government and the BNP could see Dhaka-Delhi ties recover from the battering they received from the Yunus regime.
A day after the election in Bangladesh, Nazrul Islam Khan, a senior BNP leader, held out the assurance that the incoming BNP government would have positive ties with India.
In Pakistan, Tareque Rahman and his government will need to walk back on the embarrassing relationship the Yunus regime promoted with Islamabad.
In recent months, visits by military officers from Pakistan have been a major worry for Dhaka. Indeed, reports persisted in the run-up to the February 12 election that elements speaking for the Pakistani establishment were keen on a Jamaat victory at the ballot.
The BNP, in Bangladesh’s interest and given its emphasis on the War of Liberation, should promote proper ties with Islamabad and break free of the embarrassing embrace the Yunus regime has been in with the Shehbaz Sharif government.
For the BNP, governance will entail pragmatism resting on the values which guided Bangladesh to freedom fifty-four years ago.
The degree to which it upholds the constitution and beats back attempts by the Yunus regime to undermine it will depend on its ability to provide proper governance to the nation.
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And, yes, a question that will inevitably arise, and soon, will pertain to a new and inclusive election that must sooner rather than later exercise minds in the BNP.
Until that happens, the new BNP government will be on probation.
