The time is past due for the two main political parties of the country, the AL and BNP, who between them represent, at last count, upwards of 80% of the electorate, to step back from the abyss. What is clear after the events of May 5 is that this country is a tinder-box and that it is the responsibility of our elected representatives and the opposition (who also have an indispensible role to play in our political system) to do just that, represent the people, and not their own narrow political interests.
It seems as though both sides are hell-bent on pushing the country to a confrontation that will break the other side once and for all. At every turn, both have eschewed the path of compromise and have opted to ratchet up the provocation. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that they have come to the calculation that they would rather take their chances with confrontation than compromise and conciliation.
The folly inherent in such an approach cannot be overstated and, what is more, the parties should both know full well the disastrous consequences of going down this road. Whatever they hope to gain by precipitating a crisis, the one thing which is certain is that they will lose far more.
The ruling AL has time and again during the course of the past 4 ½ years pushed the opposition to the wall, seeking not just victory in the next general election, but annihilation. We live in too divided a country, with too many disparate factions for a project of total domination to ever be possible. Nor, indeed, would such a situation be desirable, even for the AL, which should well understand the dangers of one-party rule.
The BNP for its own part, while it has been pushed to the wall and is fighting for survival, should have had better sense than to exercise the nuclear option and throw in its lot with forces that could undermine the very fabric of the society we have built up over the past four decades. Their attitude seems to be that if they are going down, they are going to take the entire country with them.
It is not too much to suggest that the situation is so volatile and unstable that it now constitutes a threat to public safety and in extremis to our democracy. The AL and BNP must both understand that it is up to them, and them alone, to walk us back from the brink. They have that power and they must exercise it. Failure to take responsibility now could have unthinkable consequences, both in the immediate future and for the long-term fate of the nation.