Say one thing about Bengali people, they are resilient. They can get used to the most obnoxious things. Leaded smog is Cuban cigars to us, fish doesn’t taste right without formalin, we are impervious to fire, falling bricks, and sinking boats.
Politicians do their worst, re-enacting the same story over and over again, and the city just carries on, plodding forward towards some kind of middle-income utopia, dragging along it’s coterie of parasites, criminals, and looters. Nothing changes, until it does.
All of a sudden, in one strange mayoral election, held amidst blockades and executions, we find a complete departure from the past, a sweeping aside of the old guard, the promise of something new. Independent candidates of many hues have run before, but never before have any of the two major parties discarded their stalwarts and offered something new!
Now, all of a sudden, in Dhaka North City Corporation, we have a genuine youth candidate, Tabith Awal, born in 1979, without the baggage of our past, unfettered by age-old loyalties, able to see the city for more than his own personal piggy bank. Their candidate is a very nice gentleman, I’m sure, and the ruling party have gone with a conservative choice, but where is the promise here, where is the will to change?
Is there any hope for us if the same people keep coming back, a faceless merry-go-round of politicians mouthing agendas written years ago?
I’m not extolling Tabith Awal’s personal virtues, which I easily could, but rather, the idea that, finally, a major political party has broken ranks and nominated someone out of the traditional power structure. Elections are about representation, first and foremost. Denying people candidates of their choice is the same as denying them the right to vote altogether.
Part of the apathy of elections comes from us looking at the ballot paper and seeing candidates who are mirror images of one another, men who could switch sides of the ballot and still be the same. What is the point of voting, then, if you’re young, and worldly, and know that the game is rigged?
Now, at this moment, we have a real choice, youth to represent the youth, someone who might do something different, who might change the ossified bureaucracy, who might step out of his air conditioned bubble and try to make the city bearable for the rest of us, who might recall what it was like going to your first job interview, of trying to find a place to live on a budget, of trying to find a dead end street to play football during the world cup, of trying to breathe.
Whatever your political affiliations, here is someone who will represent the youth, because he is the youth. Tabith Awal will change the city because he is the change, his very existence on a BNP ballot represents change within the party, a change in philosophy, a throw of the dice into the unknown. And here finally is the sliver of hope that we are evolving, moving beyond the old guard, beyond the old way of doing things, that there is something better for us, and surely it’s worth reaching for, worth taking a chance on, because how else will we ever find out?
