Don’t cry for me Bangladesh. The truth is I never left you (apologies to Andrew Lloyd Webber). Far from the anguished cry of an exiled son, the diatribes of Tarique Rahman from the UK following the Bangladesh election appeared more like the charge of the light brigade than the battle of the Alamo.
The Awami League just won the election by hook or by crook but that is the way it is. Outmaneuvered, what is the alternative for BNP now? To recap briefly, it lost the election in 2008 because it tried to be wily with the election process but the people saw through it.
After all, you can fool some people all the time and all the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time. It lost out in the recent election because of an unfounded belief that the masses would go to bat for it in the face of the AL administration.
Ironically, it was counting on the latter to wash away its own sins. Of course, that didn’t work out. What is the alternative for the party now? To carry on the movement for fair politics with its own tainted image sinking the country further into the mire?
The country clearly does not want it or deserve it. As the adage goes, he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. There are examples in history to show which way great leaders have gone in the past. Almost a century and half ago, Stephen Douglas conceded his Senate seat to Abraham Lincoln, asserting that partisan feelings must always yield to patriotism.
In that spirit, Al Gore in 2000 conceded the US presidency to George Bush for the sake of national amity even though his party felt that he should have fought it out. Should BNP take lessons from these? Many in Bangladesh think that BNP would lose its political relevance if it does not assert itself now. That of course is true, but not the way BNP thinks.
What it needs is a reboot of the tired policy of slash and burn. It needs a fresh start and a fresh strategy more candid than Machiavellian. That stands to mean that the party should come clean by admitting its wrongdoings and failings in the past, and start winning the hearts and minds of people again. That is the only way the people of Bangladesh would forgive it. That is the first step.
The next step is to show some enlightened leadership by looking at issues that are really relevant to the nation and taking them on in public. That would be a nice indication to the people that the party is moving away from scruffiness to sensibility.
After all, it has not lost all its political capital in one election. There are sensible ways of surviving after a shellacking. Mr Rabbee proposes a few good ones in his article “Some Bold New Ideas for BNP” (bdnews24.com, January 15, 2014). But no matter what it picks and chooses, there should be one guiding principal in particular, that the people should see it as an improvement on its past strategies. There are many places to look for guidance in this regard, and the party leadership needs only to sift through the news media to get it.
Is this U-turn in strategy possible for the BNP? Why not? What does it stand to lose? Any hope of regaining power back soon would be somewhat unrealistic given the current national and international moods.
On top of that, the AL could still pull a few more rabbits out of its hat and use them deftly to sink BNP’s image further. If the BNP does not do something to burnish its image soon, the AL will do it for them.
Now one cannot be a pontiff without a cause. To me, the cause is to sustain the present trend in economic and social strides the country has been making, a loss of which worries many within the country and outside. This is worth fighting for and sacrificing for. There is no reason why fratricidal politics should make this difficult to achieve if one fights in the true national spirit.
Having said all that about the BNP, I must evenhandedly talk about a strategic change of direction for the AL too. Many would agree that past immersion of the party top brass has been on two issues. One was to bring a closure on the question of the liberation war crimes and the other was to bring a closure on the assassination of the party chief Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
I do believe that both have been fulfilled to a large extent and it is now time to plug the amity gap in national politics. It is quite expected that in a democracy, a change of guards would take place every now and then based upon people’s perception of the values added to their lives by the incumbent administration.
Policies are but experiments based on party ideology, and they do not always yield the desired outcome. That is why governments have to change, with new policies supplementing the old. That is the essence of democracy. To believe in democracy, one must believe in its mechanism and be ready to accept defeat if only to rise again later with better ideas and higher goals, or to accept victory with humility with the greater interest of the nation in mind.
Magnanimity lies with the winner. Now that Awami league has officially started on its path to a new term, it should start with a spirit of reconciliation and provide space for reentry of BNP in a way that is generous and not demeaning.
What would it lose if it doesn’t? For one, there is only one direction it can go without a meaningful opposition, down. Legitimacy aside in the minds of the governed, the party would fall prey to internal decay which would bring it down from within.
A second term is rare in Bangladesh’s history and should be used wisely to solve the peoples’ problems rather than personal problems of the leadership. The AL should understand that it has not swept the election with all round cheers and that it itself has a lot of image burnishing to do. It has challenges clearly on a number of fronts – religious extremism, corruption, foreign relations, economic and social imperatives, to name a few. The party’s approach to all these should be made apparent and transparent very quickly to bring the nation on board.
It would be a mammoth challenge for Sheikh Hasina to rein in her party orneries, but she could do it if she puts her heart to it. The bottom line is giving something to the people to cheer about and restore peace in the country, which could only strengthen the image of the party. Isn’t that better than another cycle of tension and turmoil and constant guard against someone or something that might prove very dear in the end?
