Well, here we are. The January 5 elections happened and the 10th parliament has been convened. The world didn’t end and the sky didn’t fall. Closer to home, the anarchy/civil war that some were fearing and others were secretly hoping for did not transpire, and with the belated abandonment (at least for now) of the BNP hartal/blockade program, an uneasy calm reigns and things seem to be inching back to normal.
I say uneasy, but, for the most part, people far prefer this lull to what preceded it. The emotion which seems to predominate, more than anger or anxiety or rejoicing or relief, is one of resignation. More than anything else, people are weary.
They are tired of the violence and the danger. They are tired of the blockades and the school closings. They are tired of not being able to simply get on with their lives. They are tired of the political squabbling (machinations seems to be too dignified a term) between the two sides.
Few people believe that the elections were any such thing. They are a little shocked that the PM and the AL have apparently been able to get away with holding their one-sided election, but no one really knows what can be done about it, and such is the battered state of the national psyche that fewer even seem to care.
None of this is to justify the actions of the AL. Not only were the elections one-sided and uncontested, but the AL campaigned for them on the explicit promise that they saw them as merely a constitutional necessity and that they acknowledged and recognised that the result would not give them a mandate to rule for five years.
It would not be far-fetched to suggest that much of the support for the January 5 elections was premised precisely on this promise, and to now attempt to move away from the pre-election understanding shows shockingly bad faith on the part of the AL.
But minister after minister is on record saying that they have a mandate to govern for five years, and both members of parliament and the cabinet are certainly comporting themselves as though they are in it for the long haul. In short, the AL has pulled a good old-fashioned bait and switch on the good people of Bangladesh, and there doesn’t appear to be much that anyone can do about it.
I don’t buy the line of argument that is doing the rounds among smug AL-ers and what passes for the sophisticated commentariat: That the BNP brought this upon itself and they have no one to blame but themselves for boycotting an election that they very well might have won.
It is true that the BNP did rather improbably snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and that they did everything wrong. But that shouldn’t blind us to the truth that they did exactly what the AL would have done, indeed did do, when the shoe was on the other foot, but whereas the AL was bailed out by the international community and the army in 2007, in 2014 the BNP was left high and dry.
In short, the only difference between the AL in 2007 and the BNP in 2014 was 1/11, and had 1/11 never happened, and had the BNP been able to go ahead with their one-sided election on January 22, 2007, with the AL sitting on the sidelines, we would have heard exactly the same arguments that we are hearing now, but in reverse.
I wonder whether the PM ever thinks, as she contemplates her hapless rival scheming and plotting her downfall from her lair in Gulshan, how that so easily could have been her seven years ago. Something tells me that the thought never crosses her mind or that of her supporters.
So where do we go from here? It could be that the quiet we are enjoying is the calm before the storm, and that the BNP is merely catching its breath in between rounds. But I do not see them being able to force a new election, one to their liking, any time soon.
They are in a Catch-22 situation. The only thing likely to precipitate new elections is another round of crippling hartals and blockades, but it is precisely these tactics that are the most unacceptable and that damage their support the most.
Which leaves us with the AL. The only thing the need fear right now is over-reach. If they are restrained and cautious in their approach, then they could be in power a long time. On the other hand, if they start to believe their own propaganda and mistake the public’s resignation for deep well-springs of support and enthusiasm, then they could very quickly return the upper hand to the BNP.
Of course, everything I have written only holds good for this month. Next month anything could happen that would utterly change the face of politics. This is Bangladesh, after all.
