Mostafa Kamal MajumderThe global lender World Bank which has been hated by the people at the corridors of power for pushing hard with the Padma Bridge scam has of late come up with nice comments on Bangladesh’s notable improvement in the area of poverty reduction and sympathetic description of the threat that climate change poses to millions of its people. The economy has been growing for the last 22 years in a sustained way thanks to the relative stability brought through the democratic transformation of 1991. But signs are clearly emerging that dangerous cracks have set in the body politic threatening the aura of sustainability that it benefited from during the little over a couple of decades.Indications of restlessness are clear from the statements made by the leaders of the major political parties about what would be the mode of holding of the next general elections that are due by the end of this year. While the government functionaries are making firm statements about elections under the supervision of the incumbents, the opposition has continued to press for restoration of the caretaker government which was abolished through the passage of the Constitution 15th Amendment Act based on a Supreme Court Judgment that declared the 13th Amendment Act null and void.
Polemics that followed the recent night cleansing of the BNP-supported Hefazat-e-Islam demonstration from the Motijheel Shapla Chattar on May 5 night, gave the people the impression that the ruling alliance was on the driving seat, reversing its earlier position to sit with the opposition at any place, anytime to one dictating terms. Save BNP’s chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia, most opposition leaders have served under-trial-prisoner terms. Some of them have been enlarged by courts on bail, some others are still languishing in jails or are in the hiding to avoid arrest in the many cases filed since the Hefazat-e-Islam’s Dhaka siege programme.
Although the political environment has now been seriously influenced by the defeat of the AL-backed Mayors in the four city corporations of Rajshahi, Khulna, Sylhet and Barisal at the hands of their BNP-backed rivals; and Bangladesh’s development partners have started making fresh assessments about the political future of the country, the major players on the political stage are showing no sign of mutual tolerance, accommodation of and respect for each other. It seems they would break but not bend, as the adage of the olden days goes. Civil engineers would not call it a healthy state because the flexible steel that bends lasts, while the hard one breaks into pieces.
But when it comes to the serious question of democratic future of the country such inflexibility can only be tantamount to the great danger signal of an impending stroke. From the government side alarm has been raised about the possibility of the opposition leaders being taken prisoners in case an ‘unelected’ caretaker government takes over once again. Such a government would continue to be in power indefinitely till the ‘Doomsday’, the opposition has been cautioned. Opposition leaders on the other hand have made it clear that they won’t compromise on the question of election under a non-party caretaker administration.
It is precisely on the demand that the incumbents in power along with the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, now facing threat of ban, had waged a relentless movement in 1993-95 against the then BNP government to introduce the provision of caretaker government to oversee the conduct of general elections. The opposition had resigned from Parliament in December 1994 to press the demand, but the popular support to the government elected on the basis of the General Will of the people was so strong that they paid little heed to the same despite the observance of 173 days of hartal. The BNP government did call election in February 1996 after the dissolution of Parliament, but the major opposition parties boycotted the same, giving it the look of a one-sided election. The next election was called in June the same year after the passage of the 13th Amendment Act. It was contested by the opposition which formed government as a broad-based coalition led by the AL mainly with the support of the Jatiya Party. Ironically, the authors of the caretaker concept – Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami – were marginalised in the election. When the Constitution 12th Amendment Act was passed in Parliament in 1991 Jamaat had submitted a private member’s bill on caretaker government only to be rejected by all the then major parties – the BNP, the AL and the JP at the committee level.
But since that time volumes of water passed through the Buriganga in two decades, and the country went under a two-year emergency rule of a caretaker government backed by former Army chief Gen Moyeen Uddin Ahmed, which resigned after holding the December 2008 elections that brought the AL-led alliance back to power. There was no political demand for abolition of the caretaker system which a former Chief Justice found ultra vires of the Constitution amid dissenting notes given by some judges of the Appellate Division. Three Constitutional amendments – the 5th, the 7th and the 13th – had thus been declared null and void under one former Chief Justice. The Appellate Division in its original order favoured two general elections under the caretaker system however without requiring former chief justices to head those.
The concept of caretaker government, emanating from the brains of Bangladeshis, has gained in popularity in Pakistan and Nepal. But the system has been exiled from its land of birth. Nobody would ask for a caretaker system to be in force for all days to come. But its importance lies in giving – under the prevailing circumstances – credibility to elections that make elected governments relatively stable. It is due to this relative stability in governance that Bangladesh has made notable progress in meeting the MDG goals in education, poverty reduction, water and sanitation. The key to stability was acceptable election that both the major parties benefited from, though their overall performances differ.
With the dispute over the major key to the stable functioning of democratically elected governments raging on, complaints have been made about violation of fundamental human rights, in this winner takes all democracy of ours. On the other hand charges have been made of pursuing or harbouring religious extremism by some parties and their allies that have so far practiced constitutional politics. Thus situation has become ripe to take mutual intolerance and disrespect to their extremes, although these are the anti-theses of democracy. Such a situation puts democracy-loving people in trouble, as they have to maintain the vigil for liberty, equality and fraternity. All development partners have in their own ways pressed for making the next elections, participatory, credible and acceptable. Those in the corridors of power have also on different occasions expressed their willingness to work out an agreed formula of credible elections. As long-term observers it is our fear that the dangerous divide on the question of credible elections would not only threaten the sustainability of two-decade old façade of democracy, but also create offshoots that can be contained only at a great price. Let good sense prevail.
