On September 1 2013, the incumbent party in power, Bangladesh Awami League, begins its campaign activities for the next general election. This is exciting news for those of us who like to observe and be entertained by all the pre-election shenanigans.
It also kicks off what politicos call the “silly season” which is basically fancy terminology for a period in politics when anything and everything goes in an attempt to grab headlines. Promises will be made, visions preached, lives claimed to have been changed, or not.
It is a time when all of us can demand to get attention of our leaders and in some cases will enjoy it. It is the only time, in any democracy, when we the people have the odds in our favour and our politicians listen to us with perched ears.
The power scale will tip slightly to our direction and the ego meter on our politicians will be well and truly in the green zone. It is festive. It is tense. It is comical. All in all, a wonderful time to be a political observer.
Now that that’s out of the way, what do I as an ardent political follower think will happen over the next few months?
First, in the interest of transparency and as a disclaimer of sorts, what I am about to discuss in the following write up are strictly my views and don’t reflect in any measure the official editorial stand of the Dhaka Tribune and contains heavy doses of conjecture.
It is my belief, on evidence of the activities leading up to the last four months of this government that, we will have no substantial political crisis, the elections will happen as scheduled or expected. Anything that doesn’t match the above scenario, to me, is fear-mongering.
The opposition doesn’t have a game plan to combat what is in effect a full indictment on their brand of politics as it stands today. The opposition cannot stop the tactical controlling of the electoral and national agenda by the ruling party because they have too many things on their platter to combat, not in the least of which is finding the space and time to be relevant.
Healthy and sincere right-wing nationalistic politics in Bangladesh, almost like that of the Republicans in the US, only worse in our case, is ten steps behind in progress and more unpopular today than any given time in our history, resulting from various contributing factors that I will not get into here.
Anti-incumbency is a true nemesis of the incumbent in Bangladeshi politics and has provided in the past a picture of an end result that is as certain as death and taxes barring any outside interference or untoward incidents. Despite that, I am willing to put my neck out and say that the incumbent in this silly season is leaps ahead of its closest competitors.
Far from perfect, with mammoth issues of their own and even so, Bangladesh Awami League in my assumption will successfully seize the opportunity to tell the entire country of their future vision for development and top it off with chest-beating pride, the success they have achieved, of which there are many notable ones.
In the midst of that storm, the opposition will in effect be occupied with answering for serious allegations, mitigating organisational strife (examples of which we have already witnessed), fallout from a lack of coordination, indictments and/or convictions in existing cases of some senior ranking members creating an unheard-of negative image going into the next general election – all the while fighting to stop an unprecedented dip in their party morale.
This will leave no significant room for them to discuss what good they could do if in power. I strongly believe that even if they succeed in securing a pause in that downward spiral, it is simply too late in the game for them to mount a serious movement for any demands to be met.
It is a realisation of that reality, which I believe has played into the softening of the opposition tone for the demand of a caretaker government and indeed in the hardening of the prime minister’s recent posture regarding the same.
I have been told by many a wise political observers that perception of strength decides political outcome in elections within Bangladesh, where the swing voters decide the fate of a party based on that perception: the set-winning horse syndrome.
I believe, though, that works only when the opposition is considered to have mounted perceptively a real challenge worth supporting with real ideas and issues that people identify with, having washed-away memories of a bad performance which led to their loss in the interim and having taken over the national agenda, which even at this late stage the opposition have failed to do.
Many are dissatisfied with this government and rightly so but aside from a handful of significant issues, it has more to do with our inherent Bangladeshi character to reject and blame those in power.
On a level playing field of slow runners, at least one has expressed a plan on how to take us into the future and have, to some extent, succeeded. As it stands now, despite the city corporation victories, the opposition hasn’t proposed one single serious non-gimmicky idea that would make our lives easier. Any perceptive momentum from those victories now lie dormant.
I am sure many recognise that due to circumstances a swing voter, who is now a more mature electorate, may for the first time wonder whether keeping the incumbent in power could lead to increased development and sustainable change.
I think people now recognise that change takes time and a consistent approach. I believe they understand this beyond their traditional biases or perhaps I am wrong and it truly is the start of silly season.