If you are a pragmatic person, well versed with the medieval politics we are used to within Bangladesh, you will agree that everything that is happening today is exactly as we expect it to be, except the tragic surge in the murder and maiming of our brothers and sisters who are trying to simply survive in their daily lives in this harsh environment we call home.
Like most, I couldn’t care less about the well-being of the players; but like most, I remain deeply disturbed for the lynching of the collateral in this game. I have a strong bias in this matter that is regulated by my emotions towards the victims here. That awful bit of the equation needs to be balanced out and fast. I don’t care how it’s stopped, as long as it is.
The country under AL isn’t doing any worse than any other government that has had reins on power before. In fact, a valid argument can be made of AL’s performance in government being peppered with some exemplary successes; and given time, as a strong believer of the benefits of continued governance, I believe the AL-led government has every chance to become the most effective development force in our country’s history by the time their term ends. This can simply happen as a result of how long they would have been in power.
I think the people realise this. It is for that reason, I hope, that AL is successful in their present drive to stop the violence, so that we can go back to making ends meet without blockages and let them carry on playing their game without other players so that we can gain in the long term.
If you switched parties in this current scenario, my recommendations would still be the same, except that I would then perhaps back BNP. You can stop reading now if you disagree, because nothing in the rest of this article will make it a pleasant read.
We must stop deluding ourselves and open our eyes to the fact that a pure functional form of democracy is not what we have in Bangladesh right now. We don’t believe in it or practice it in any real way.
Democratic tendencies are not a social norm for us. It’s an impractical mirage. An unattainable goal. One that we don’t have the nationwide education or resources to enforce.
One that we like to talk about a lot and write about but we don’t understand the core concept of; which is the accountability of our leaders and elected officials.
We neither have the courage nor the infrastructure to demand accountability or the organisational or moral power or alternate leadership to combat it. We have a system that we helped put in place and nurtured with ignorance, misunderstanding, disgust, and disdain.
The gap between our aspirations, promises made against it, its manifestation and our say in holding our leaders accountable to their failures every five years means, we just switch off and vote in an alternating pattern between two options presented to us, hoping against hope for good and complaining in the interim.
So, the system we have in place is a very, very, weak form of democracy and ultimately one that is self-defeating. We elect leaders democratically into positions that turns them into dictators of various shadings.
In the last election, one of our two options withdrew voluntarily in a miscalculated move by standards of the game, so that they could wreak havoc in the future, which they are. The other went on to carry on ruling us, which they are.
It is the predictability of our politics and the history of a long conditioned feudalism ingrained within our lazy personalities that has stopped us for more than two decades from flooding the streets of Bangladesh forcing real reform.
It is that unique bohemian, feudalistic personality that is stopping us now from coming out into the streets as a nation, demanding BNP to stop its terrorism of the people and compelling the government to reach a middle ground with BNP after they do, to set up a framework for future reform of the system.
It is this personality of ours that has led to a system-wide takeover by a vocal minority of partisan players functioning on the basis of favours, handouts, and promises that dominate the system. No good man wants to fight these street-hardened, win-at-all-cost minions. They are the reason so many deaths are happening all around us today.
The chances of any real change then becomes dependent either on a discontinuation of the system in place (often not preferred, legal or beneficial) as the “Mannagate” tapings apparently were so seditiously hoping to help induce.
Or a true people’s revolution led (because of the feudal mindset) by a charismatic leader that can only happen when this system fully fails us in the perception it projects and does real damage -- and it hasn’t to that scale yet. So, we have hit an impasse to real reform and true change.
You could argue against the AL-led government’s performance. You could argue we have a depleted standard of civil and human rights. You could argue perhaps that we don’t function as a democracy. You have every right to make that argument but you cannot (without a shred of evidence) pin the blame on the government as the cause for murder of innocent citizens, the arson, and the vandalism when they stand to gain nothing from it and lose everything they hold dear as a result, and that is what a lot of our “civil intelligentsia” are attempting to do.
The truth is, the only people doing real damage to us in this impasse is the opposition and its allies, both local and international, due to their lack of patience to gain back power. Don’t buy into their promises to rule better. They won’t.
They have proposed no future vision for Bangladesh. Don’t argue for them in advance. That is the only power you have. Their entire fight in the last four years has been to set themselves up to get to the throne by any means; they are not fighting for us.
The fight of the opposition should be for the people they want to serve in the future and they haven’t demonstrated the intention to do that. We are better off as we are. Some group of people will fill up for them and
I am sure they will at least have a vision
for the future, which would instantaneously place them above the opposition we have now.
And when that new opposition succeeds, we may even have the illusive change we all so desperately seek. But that isn’t going to happen if BNP finds a way back to power right now because it will simply prolong our journey to true reformation.