The Awami League is under enormous pressure. It has generally borne the brunt of such pressure throughout its history. Between its founding in 1949 and its reshaping as a secular political organization in 1955, it weathered a number of crises.
In the 1960s, the state of Pakistan, personified by Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, went after it with a vengeance. In 1971, General Yahya Khan committed the cardinal political sin of refusing to acknowledge the party's triumph at the general election and proscribing it.
In independent Bangladesh, the Awami League has been the one political party which has paid a high price for its principles. In the early 1970s, such activities as those of Siraj Sikdar's Sarbahara Party and of other underground leftist organizations kept the AL, then governing the country, on its toes. Again, the slogan of a Muslim Bengal, raised by Moulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, went a considerable way in undermining the secular ethos of the Bangladesh state.
Add to that the adventurism of the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal. Its politics fundamentally was anti-politics. Besides, the creation of the Rakkhi Bahini earned the AL a bad name, as did the unexplained killing of Siraj Sikdar.
In the year 1975, beginning with the change in the nature of politics through the fourth amendment to the constitution, namely, the institution of Baksal, the Awami League swiftly saw its glory days come to a conspiratorial end through the assassinations of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the four national leaders between August and November.
In the Zia years, the party was reduced to a patchwork of factions, each vying with the other to claim the high ground. And, yes, there was Abdur Razzaque going for his own version of Baksal before making his way back to the party.
The period between August 1975 and May 1981 were dark years for the Awami League. It was a time when courageous individuals like Zohra Tajuddin waged a difficult battle to keep the party relevant in the public domain, even as Dewan Farid Gazi and Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury attempted to keep their factions of the party going.
Not until Sheikh Hasina was recalled from exile by party elders to be the leader of the Awami League was the party able to regain, slowly but surely, the ground that had been swept from under its feet.
As we focus on all this history, the Awami League is under pressure once again, both at home and from foreign governments and institutions. The Americans have exercised the "right" to impose sanctions on Bangladesh's politicians and others -- and their immediate family members -- should complaints arise about the forthcoming general election.
Other foreigners have, in so many words, hinted that voting in transparency be ensured. There are, let us be very clear here, all those questions about the 2014 and 2018 elections being raised anew. And these are questions which need not be raised at the next election, if the Awami League is able to navigate its way out of the bind it is in, if the Election Commission is fully empowered to handle the voting.
The reality today is that over the last fourteen years the Awami League, as the party of government, has presided over a process of economic development that can be ignored at peril to our collective self-esteem. Communications, GDP growth, rural development, industrialization, foreign remittances, et cetera, are some of the areas where progress has been perceptible.
At the same time, though, there are all the instances of corruption, of money laundering, of banks teetering on the verge of collapse, of crony capitalism which have without question undermined the image of the party.
The party's heavyweights have been speaking in discordant voices on such issues as a dialogue, or the absence of it, with the political opposition. Its student wing has engaged in acts that are a far cry from the constructive role played by the Chhatra League in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Awami League, in government, has been credited for its achievements in a good number of areas. It brought a long insurgency by the Shanti Bahini in the Chittagong Hill Tracts to an end; it repealed the infamous indemnity act and brought the 1975 assassins to justice; it succeeded in reaching a deal with the Deve Gowda government in India.
In more recent times, the government's grant of refuge to the Rohingyas has been an admirable act of generosity. It has, despite the challenges, been able to tide over the crisis caused by Covid-19.
In foreign policy, the Awami League government has demonstrated, in practical terms, Bangabandhu's dictum of diplomacy being based on the concept of friendship for all and malice toward none. Bangladesh's ties with India, China, and Russia are proof of the pragmatism the party has exercised in its handling of foreign policy.
Relations with the West, with the Middle East, with south-east, and east Asia have been based on economic considerations. The government has resisted all inducements to be part of the Quad.
All such positivity notwithstanding, the Awami League government has come in for condemnation -- and not without reason -- over its treatment of the opposition and the media. It has felt distinctly uncomfortable with civil society, spotting in it the seeds of transferable discontent. Ministers have regularly gone into a campaign against the opposition when it would have been more prudent to focus on administration.
The formulation of the Digital Security Act and its freewheeling application against the media and others have not done the party any credit. For a party which has in its history stressed the significance of liberal democracy, such draconian measures have militated against its ethos.
The Awami League, proud of its secular approach to politics, missed the opportunity, when it returned to power at the December 2008 election, to steer the country back to its secular foundations.
It was a moment in history when the party could have, through parliamentary fiat, repealed and removed every anti-secular move indulged in by those who commandeered the state and kept it in their grip between 1975 and 1996.
The constitution, as it was framed and adopted in 1972, should have been restored in full -- with democracy, socialism, secularism, and nationalism emphasized anew in the larger interest of history.
The idea of "Bangladeshi nationalism," militating against the Bengali nationalism powering the War of Liberation, ought to have been struck down through an act of parliament.
In similar manner, the Ershad regime's imposition of religious majoritarianism on the country should have been dispensed with.
In simple terms, the Awami League government ought to have guided the nation back to a state that would have had no room for communal or religion-based politics. All such legacies of the post-1975 regimes, as long as they are not decisively rolled back, will stymie Bangladesh's march to the future.
Between this rather worrying present and a hopefully better future, the Awami League will need to reinvent itself. Nominations for parliamentary seats should go to men and women who have kept the party banner alive by endless commitment to the party cause at the grassroots level.
In Bangabandhu's era, the party shone in the brilliance of the lawyers and professional politicians who constituted its core. Bangabandhu's cabinet was a marvellous unit of governance, for politicians served as ministers. Superannuated government servants and business people had a negligible role in the party.
The Awami League needs to return home to its roots rather than give space to individuals parachuting into it and walking away with nominations which rightfully belong to its hard-working activists and leaders in the villages and towns of the land.
In the run-up to the election, pragmatism and wisdom should govern the political programme of the Awami League. It will need to re-embrace the broad-based class of intellectuals who, in an earlier era, both under Bangabandhu and Sheikh Hasina, complemented party policy with enlightened ideas.
The Awami League does not need yes-men. It needs politicians who will be its future leadership. It requires people who can, within its inner councils, argue and debate and advise the party leadership on the modalities through which it can reclaim the high ground of morality-driven politics and history-oriented governance.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.