Why are Bangladeshi political parties saddled with such poor leadership, when there are so many qualified people in the country? At this juncture in Bangladesh’s history, where we seem to have a rare opportunity to make positive changes, it’s worth thinking about how to make political parties into welcoming places where any interested person can join the political process and make their voices heard.
Ultimately, an interim government has to call elections; these can be expected to bring about real improvements in the country only if the political parties can themselves be improved.
First of all, it cannot escape the notice of anyone in Bangladesh that the major political parties are havens of criminal activity. Every trader and businessman has the experience of dealing with local political party thugs and mastans demanding “donations” (chanda). University students trying to secure places in residence halls of public universities have to jump through hoops to keep the local mastans happy. Even managing directors of banks reportedly feel similar pressure, resulting in our current epidemic of bank loan default.
Anyone experiencing this would never dream of joining the political parties which patronize the thugs who are victimizing them. That’s a simple reason why many Bangladeshis find it impossible to join AL/BNP as they are currently constituted. So these parties have to be completely cleaned up. It’s only when people view a political party as a safe and civilized place to discuss views that the average person will be willing to join. That means we need a country ruled by law and order, with no chandabaji, extortion, or willful bank loan default. This can only be accomplished by an efficient and effective police force and judiciary. Banks and financial institutions which have fallen victim to fraud will probably have to be closed down. The government should ensure that depositors’ money is returned to them.
Second, people will only join a political party if they see that their votes matter. In the UK, each MP constituency has local political party branches. Local party members get to know each other’s views through regular meetings and policy discussions, and when it’s time to decide who will be the MP nominee from that area, local party members’ votes generally do have weight (although the system is not perfect; parliamentary selection groups in each party have the ultimate say in who gets MP nominations). Still it’s a far cry from the practice of MP nominations being decided by the dynastic families of political parties in Bangladesh; such selection authority gives those royal families a strangle-hold on democracy which needs to be broken.
Implementing local party votes to determine MP candidate nominations would create a meritocratic pathway for new leadership to emerge from the ground up in all our political parties, freeing them from the clutches of the political dynasties who have served us so poorly.
Third, politics must become completely non-violent -- no civilized person will join a political party if the job of the party is to engage in street warfare. In developed countries, there’s a distinguishing feature of legitimate political activism; it’s never violent. Over the last few years there have been countless political protests in Western countries over climate change, and more recently Israel’s genocidal bombardment in Gaza; but there is rarely any violence.
Political violence in developed countries generally results in the individuals involved facing criminal charges and jail time. Bangladeshi politics has to take this evolutionary step. Being a successful politician must be about having good policy ideas and communicating them to the public to build support, not about fighting in the streets.
Of course, all of the above will be a huge challenge to implement. But it points the way forward for the current students’ movement -- collecting rubbish and directing traffic is great, but to really change Bangladesh we have to change our political parties. The student activists can either start their own party which embodies all the non-criminal, meritocratic, and non-violent principles mentioned above; or they can join existing political parties and try to change them from within.
The interim government should ensure that these principles are enforced by a strong Election Commission, which must ensure that all political parties have meaningful local elections to select MP candidates through a meritocratic process independent of hereditary party leadership. Then we can finally look forward to a country ruled by the people rather than by the thugs.
Zeeshan Hasan is a director of Kazi Farms Group and Kazi Media, the company behind Deepto TV. He is also the managing director of Sysnova.
