Since that announcement on the probability of visa-related sanctions on Bangladesh's politicians and others by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party has been in an upbeat mood. That is okay. The BNP and its political allies are keen about a transparent and fair election, which is fine. That the BNP, which has been out of power since October 2006, is desperate about returning to office is understandable.
But then come the larger, consequential questions. To what extent has the BNP been able to come to terms with the political realities which have been shaping up in Bangladesh over the last 14 years? Given the determination with which the party, especially its leading figures, have been going all-out in their move to see the back of the present government, it is quite understandable that the BNP would like to make a fresh start should it manage to regain power through the forthcoming general election.
The idea of a fresh start for the BNP has in recent times been manifested by the ideas it has sought to throw across to the country. There have been the 27 points aimed at what the party has called a reform of the state. And then have come the 31 points which spell out what the party will do if and when it gets back to office. In recent days it has been organising rallies on the basis of a single point, the removal of the Awami League government, of course, and a provision of elections being conducted under a neutral caretaker government.
The BNP leadership and its fellow travellers on the political road are clearly convinced that Western pressure -- and that is a reference to the hectic activities undertaken by the US and the EU toward ensuring that a rules-based election is organized in Bangladesh -- will prove too overbearing for the AL to resist. For its part, an embattled AL is yet to demonstrate any sign of weakness on its part. Its insistence on the election being conducted with Sheikh Hasina in prime ministerial office has not been shaken. What the future holds, though, is a picture we will wait to see emerge.
Where the BNP's need to return to power is the question, one cannot but place a good number of questions before its leadership. Those 27 points and 31 points are fine, but not one of them deals with the matter of how the BNP means to resolve the crisis it generated back in the late 1970s around the nation's history. No one in the party has yet condemned the assassinations of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the four national leaders in August-November 1975. There has been no explanation on why “Bangladeshi nationalism,” first touted by the journalist and Zia acolyte Khondokar Abdul Hamid, obviously with the nod of the military regime then in control of the state, in February 1976, was sought to be imposed on the country in clear contravention of the Bengali nationalism which between the autonomy movement of the 1960s and the War for Liberation and after was the core principle of politics in the country.
That “Bangladeshi nationalism” contravenes the spirit of the movement for national liberation has not been explained or acknowledged by the BNP. And therein is a conundrum for the country: On the one hand, there are the progressive forces which have rooted their politics in the essence of Bengali nationalism and on the other there is the right-wing which has happily engaged in politics on the basis of an ideology which militates against the founding principles of the state.
The BNP, even as it feels emboldened at the turns the political situation has been taking in the country, has not had the inclination to clarify its stand on the infamous indemnity ordinance, incorporated in the nation's constitution in the times of its founder until it was repealed by parliament in 1996. The party has never sought to distance itself from the act. Neither has it proffered a position reflecting its willingness to adapt to the transformative nature of national politics, beginning with the repeal of the indemnity ordinance.
On the larger question of the distortion of history, fundamentally through airbrushing out of the narrative Bangabandhu and the authentic story of the War for Liberation in its years in power and, of course, beginning with the rise of General Ziaur Rahman to power in November 1975, the BNP has maintained absolute silence. While it has tried portraying its readiness to work on an implementation of its 27 points and 31 points, it has remained quiet on what it means to do to turn a new page in its interpretation of history through the prism of the national narrative shaped during the war.
All of these factors vis-à-vis the election-oriented politics of the BNP need to be handled by the party. If they are not, the divisiveness which has long characterised the country will assume worse circumstances in the future. Let us be clear here: in the 1960s and during the 1971 war and in the early post-war period in Bangladesh (despite the myriad issues the government confronted between January 1972 and August 1975), national unity served as the arbiter of politics. Post-August 1975, Bangladesh was pushed back into a state of politics which clearly undermined its principles. Those who defend the BNP's politics today would serve the nation well if they can steer the party toward an acknowledgement of the realities it has consistently looked away from or has deliberately pushed under the rug.
The BNP wants, as everyone else does in this country, a clean and fair election. A number of the points it has made in recent times, notably a bicameral legislature and an expansion of powers for the presidency, are certainly appreciable. Its projected policy on the media calls for analysis. Its position on human right rights merits deliberation across the board.
The party, in the run-up to the election, will be called upon to reassure the nation and governments abroad that it will ensure a continuity of the foreign policy pursued by the AL government should it return to power. Additionally, with all the memories of the mayhem its activists went into against the minority Hindu community and AL workers in the aftermath of its electoral triumph in October 2001, it must reassure people that it has turned its back on that past.
For the BNP, the crisis is not merely related to its need to make a comeback to power. It is also one of ensuring that between now and the election, its leading voices do not send out the wrong messages to the country. At the same time, those who speak for it, here at home and abroad, owe it to the country to uphold the dignity of the leadership which led the nation to freedom. Maturity in politics is a necessary first step toward ascending to the top; and maturity does not come with questioning national history.
One final point. The BNP (as also all other parties) should, in the larger national interest, abjure the tendency to have foreign diplomatic missions play a supervisory role in Bangladesh's politics. When foreign governments are given an opportunity -- and the wherewithal for that opportunity comes from both the ruling party and the opposition, given the polarisation the nation has been exposed to -- to educate us publicly on how we should be conducting our politics, we in this country are all left demeaned.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune