In these past few weeks since the Bangladesh Nationalist Party formed a government for the country on returning to power at the February 12 election, there has clearly been a move by the new men in power to have Bangladesh take a journey back into the past.
For those who might not quite recall, the BNP went out of government in October 2006 and between then and the election last month, it remained in opposition as the Awami League asserted itself in national politics.
The Awami League is, of course, not in the scene at present. An arbitrary and unconstitutional move by the just departed illegitimate Yunus interim regime to decree a ban on its activities led to an election that drew no more than 30 per cent of voters to the polling stations.
In effect, therefore, the new government holds office with minority support from the electorate, which naturally raises the question of how soon conditions will develop to a degree that will call for a fresh and inclusive election in order to lend credibility to the political process.
But that, of course, depends on a couple of factors. In the first place, will the BNP be at all willing to agree to a new election, or will it persuade itself into thinking that it can safely govern Bangladesh for the next five years?
In the second, a whole lot about the nation’s future remains dependent on the Awami League, which in the nineteen months since it was ejected from power has been unable to mount any credible programme that could make it possible for it to return to politics in Bangladesh.
For its part, the BNP will, in all likelihood, reassure itself that it leads an elected government despite the absence at the vote of its principal rival, the Awami League.
For the Awami League, a clear strategy about the future has yet to emerge, but for now, party leaders and activists believe that the strategy needs to take shape through directives from the exiled Sheikh Hasina.
And then there is that other factor, that of the politics of the Jamaat-e-Islami. The party, which in the past was unable to come by a score or so of seats in Parliament, now holds as many as seventy-eight seats in the legislature.
That certainly is a feat for the party and one would suppose the Jamaat people would be happy at the outcome of the February election. Yet that happiness is missing for the simple reason that Jamaat leaders and workers had been convinced that the party would ride to power through winning a majority of seats at the election.
And of late, Jamaat politicians have been coming forth with allegations of vote tampering by the BNP and its friends at the election.
Their protests were given impetus by the comment of a former advisor to the Yunus regime to the effect that Islamist forces had been prevented from coming to power. The Jamaat pounced on that comment to substantiate its charge of rigging at the election.
Be that as it may, public attention is currently focused on the session of the new Parliament that got underway on Thursday. How the BNP government handles some critical issues left for it by the Yunus regime will be, for political observers as well as general citizens, a matter of crucial importance.
Will the government do away with the plethora of ordinances and other measures undertaken in a clearly questionable manner by the Yunus outfit? Will there be any indemnity, sanctioned by Parliament, for those responsible for the murder of scores upon scores of policemen in the aftermath of the political change of early August 2024?
An important issue relates to the swearing-in of the members of Parliament last month. While the BNP and the handful of small parties aligned with it had their lawmakers take the oath under the Constitution, the Jamaat and its partners took, in an improbable manner, two oaths: one in line with the Constitution and the other through expressing their fealty to the so-called referendum that was held alongside the election on February 12.
Experts have argued, with good reason, that lawmakers who took the second oath after swearing by the first forfeited their right to be members of Parliament because it was a violation of the Constitution. One will just have to wait to see how parliamentary politics pans out once the legislature goes into session.
So all of this begs the question: where is Bangladesh headed? Given the enthusiasm of the ruling BNP for the politics it has consistently pursued, the country is being made to trek back once more to the past.
Old wounds and old fissures seem to be opening up again, with the BNP’s public message that Bangladesh’s movement for independence was the result of its founder’s call for freedom in March 1971.
In terms of history, then Major Ziaur Rahman, the father of the current Prime Minister, made the independence announcement on behalf of Bangladesh’s founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The BNP is clearly ignoring this truth yet again.
And, yes, it appears that the old ‘zindabad’ politics, first imposed on the country by the usurper regime which took charge of the country in August 1975 and subsequently appropriated by General Zia and the BNP, is back.
The Bengali nationalist slogan of Joi Bangla, suppressed by the illegal Yunus outfit, remains fugitive, at least for now. President Mohammed Shahabuddin, elected to office by the Awami League and holding fealty to the spirit of 1971 as espoused by Bangabandhu loyalists in Bangladesh, in a public address last week referred to Ziaur Rahman’s role in the War of Liberation.
He concluded his remarks by referring to ‘Bangladesh zindabad’ rather than toJoi Bangla. It was not only a sign of the change in the country’s political atmosphere but also a hint of the weakness embedded in the office of the country’s President, who can only read out what any given ruling dispensation places before him.
Bangladesh’s worries remain. On the anniversary of Bangabandhu’s seminal 7 March 1971 speech, citizens were prevented from gathering in tribute before his demolished residence.
Wherever the speech was played in public, mobs made sure that the organisers were compelled to retreat in the face of violence. The media, by and large, remained silent on the day.
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And there we have a glimpse into Bangladesh as it is today, a month after an election that will be remembered in the country’s history for the non-election it truly was. Which is again a message to the Awami League leadership: if politics and the economy are to be reshaped, if national history is to be restored, Sheikh Hasina and her party colleagues must get their act together. And soon.
