Politics matters in Bangladesh.
Politics is about making life better for citizens. It has nothing of the abrasive about it. It is not a profession. It is not a game. It is not an adventure. It is a set of ideals all aimed at promoting the welfare of people, of ensuring that they stay safe and removed from the maladies that often afflict life. It is the job of politicians across the aisle and across the divide to make sure that their policies and their goals do not undercut the aspirations of citizens. When politics threatens the well-being of citizens, it loses its character. It does not qualify to be regarded as politics any more.
For those who are in power, politics is governance. Call it good governance, but that is what ruling parties are expected to undertake and ensure. For those who aspire to power, politics is a measure of all they intend to do in the larger interest of a society should they ascend to government. Politics is negated when political parties enforce, in this day and age, a blockade of streets and towns. Such politics is anti-politics, for it takes citizens hostage, for people are intimidated into staying home, unable to carry out their day-to-day responsibilities. The economy lies grievously wounded.
Politics is undermined, and badly at that, when ruling political parties call public rallies on the same day as their rivals in the opposition. It is bad politics for a party in power to believe that its workers and activists hold the right to man the streets on the day the opposition calls a rally. Good politics is when the opposition exercises its right to organise rallies without any impediments being put in its path by those it seeks to displace.
And good politics happens when those in the corridors of authority call their rallies on days that do not have their rivals doing the same. Politics is about positive competition. It is not about confrontation on the streets, conflict that will likely lead to violence. Politics does not cause the death of policemen or of any citizen. It is not about a journalist dying from the effects of a tear gas operation by law enforcers. When such tragedy takes place, it is politics which goes fugitive.
Politics, which pursues the goal of an attainment of democracy, does not ask for the overthrow of governments that have not been raised to power through authoritarian or conspiratorial means. It is not about a widening of the existing divide in society but is an endeavour toward bridging the divide. It is about people being given choices through an enumeration of ideals and ideas, through ensuring that on election day the voice of the people will matter. Politics turns into a successful enterprise when people cheerfully trek to the polling stations to exercise their right of franchise, when they come back home knowing that no one had commandeered their vote.
A necessary requirement in politics is for political parties to go into introspection when their stock among the electorate is low or when they have lost elections fair and square. Parties which hold on to old ideas, those which do not any more register with voters, are failing politics because their stubbornness is holding them back from reforming themselves. Politics is not about vacuous slogans but about political leaders staying in tune with the demands of the times. Politicians stay connected with the masses.
In the complex world of which we are, fortunately or otherwise, a part, politics is not a blame game but ought to be about creating space that is mutually accommodative. When buses are torched, when shops are vandalised, it becomes the moral responsibility of politicians to identify who from among their party crowds were responsible and pull them up for their criminality. Politics is when government moves swiftly into action to have order restored on the streets.
Politics is about people. It becomes the constitutional responsibility of the governing classes to make sure that citizens eat well and drink well, that in markets in the villages and towns they are be able to purchase essential items at affordable prices, that they sleep well at night. It is about ensuring that the price of beef does not go through the roof, that fish do not go beyond the reach of citizens, that rice and vegetables do not go scarce on the plates of hungry children at home.
Politics asserts itself when syndicates taking citizens hostage through hoarding eggs and onions and sugar are broken up through firm government action and those involved in them are prosecuted under the law. When rickshaw pullers and bus drivers and shop assistants have famished families at home, for their pittance of wages is not enough to fill their stomachs, politics needs to devise the ways and means of guaranteeing them food security. It is not enough to pin the blame for price rises on global events, on foreign wars.
In politics, a fundamental objective is an assurance of good education for the young and for those young to come by employment when they step out of college or university. Politics must broaden out into areas where individuals with limited education or skills are reassured that they will not be burdens on society but will have opportunities of taking care of themselves and their families through gainful employment.
Politicians owe it to society to abjure confrontation among and between themselves and see to the happiness of citizens. When many of our young people travel abroad for higher studies and then stay back, disinclined to return home, it is an abject lesson in the failure of politics to achieve its goals as a means of strengthening the foundations of the state. When corrupt individuals and families launder money abroad, buy homes abroad, it is not enough for politicians to inform us that investigations are ongoing about the criminality of these corrupt classes of people. Politics is about engaging with overseas governments and seeking their cooperation in getting the nation’s stolen resources and the thieves back into the country.
Politics goes missing when officials levelling charges against the corrupt are dismissed rather than having those alleged to be corrupt investigated. It is all about accountability, about rule of law, about politics and power being a trust maintained and sanctified in the interest of citizens. It is about institutions of the state operating as instruments of the republic, avoiding the pressure or temptation of turning into partisan bodies and so losing the respect of citizens.
Politics is a noble undertaking. It is about foreign policy being assertive and idealistic, about diplomacy being a continuity of policy for governing parties and the opposition. It owes its energy to the grassroots. It is in the ability of every citizen to articulate his basic needs and for those needs to be met by the governing powers.
In its purposeful state, politics lifts people to the heights, brings to their doors all the happiness of life. It does not discriminate between citizens and classes and creeds and faiths. It is secular in its foundations, liberal in its view of the world.
Politics is about a transformation of society into a productive unit of the state. And politicians are the force behind such transformation. Politics aims at building the structure of a just society.
Politics is what the promise of the Six Points was in the 1960s. It is what the War of Liberation inaugurated in 1971.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.