Those of us who had heaved a sigh of relief in December 2008 that the slide towards an antithesis of what we had stood for in 1971—an economically stable and pluralistic society—would be halted, are now plunged in despair.
Is this all that the Awami League could offer? Four years of non-governance and plunder hallmarked by Hallmark and Padma, just like its predecessor did? We perhaps forgot that those who enter the Ganobhaban most certainly leave their consciences behind.
Our prime minister may make fun of the “haru-party,” but in a government where not even a sheaf of grass dares flutter without her approval, the millions of supporters of her party are not amused.
When she says that she is at a loss to understand why honest candidates of her party have managed to get only 70 % of the votes that their rivals got in the recent city elections, no one is convinced.
They must have recognised the wake-up call three years ago when ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury lost in Chittagong; and yet the AL chose to ignore it and let the vandals in the party continue on their rampage. And now, to crown all this, the Jamat runs riot and war criminals get leniency. Of all people, AL should know that that is not enough to appease the brokers of Islamism.
The Awami League ceased to exist as a party on the very day the Prime Minister and her cabinet took office. Would it be too irreverent to say that their MPs and some ministers flouted every rule that should guide a political party running a government?
The party dissolved into a shadow of itself and corrupt businessmen, wearing a MP’s hat, removed the very nuts and bolts that hold a party together. It let them and the Chatro Leaguers embark on a spree of cutting off the branch that they were sitting on.
In a party whose roots are largely rural, it adopted administrative procedures that permitted thugs and not the local governments to become the arbiters.
Instead of devolution of power to them, the local government was reduced to licking favours off the all powerful MPs, whose only proficiency seems to be that of praising Bangabandhu and his family for 7 of the 12 minutes allocated to them in the Parliament.
A sad fate indeed, for a government that development-wise has been the most successful one since the country’s independence. Paradoxical as it may sound, it can also count in this cabinet the largest number of honest ministers since the 1972 cabinet.
It only took the proverbial drop of vinegar to spoil the entire bucket of milk. If the AL thinks it got served a bitter pill, let them swallow it now and then seriously go about the business of putting right the wrongs it has committed. It had five years.
What can we, the ones who have always given Awami League our unstinted support, do?
We can tell Sheikh Hasina, that there is time still to turn the party’s morale around so that it enjoys a comfortable number in the next Parliament; andto play a strong enough role in the opposition benches so the peddlers of religion and those wedded to the two nation theory will not turn the country away from the ideals of 1971.
The country is strongly poised for growth, even if another Hawa Bhaban tries to gobble it up or another “Allama” emerges asking the womenfolk to tend to their furniture.
To take the country into the realities of tomorrow,win in 2019 and oversee the celebrations for the country’s 50th anniversary, the Party should also induct capable, honest and secular people, who will not suffer from vacillations which have paralysed the it this time.
It should also reassure its minority vote-bank – not by conspiring on how to dispossess them further by inserting clauses in the enemy properties law, or stand by as approving onlookers when minority homes are burnt and their religious icons vandalised.
The minorities must feel genuinely confident that this society will remain syncretistic and that they will be equal partners. Let the party take actions now which will guarantee its return in 2019.
