Opinion Ground realities
Bangladesh debates doing away with a caretaker government for polls
Our history,Bangladeshs history,is somewhat rich in irony,assuming you have cared to notice. Observe the defiant manner in which Sheikh Hasina argues today in defence of an abolition of the caretaker form of government. She bases it on the recent Supreme Court pronouncement that the caretaker concept is a violation of the law and therefore cannot stand. We understand that. But even as we do,we recall the vociferous manner in which Sheikh Hasina and her party,back in the mid-1990s following the fiasco of a by-election in Magura,campaigned successfully for a renewal of the caretaker system that had engineered our progression from military rule to government by popular consent in early 1991.And that stretch of irony is not all. In the mid-1990s,Khaleda Zia,then in her first stint as PM,laughed off the whole idea of a caretaker government as either naivete or insanity. In the end,in March 1996,she did hand over the reins of office to a caretaker regime. Today,she and her party are determined defenders of the caretaker form of government. So irony remains a potent presence in our collective life. You wish it were not like this. You wish it were an aberration in our scheme of things. Unfortunately,irony is what we have lived with for as long as we care to remember.
Hows this for one more study in irony? Back in December 1971,the Mujibnagar government led by Syed Nazrul Islam and Tajuddin Ahmed decreed,to loud public acclamation,a ban on religion-based political parties. These parties,it was truly and credibly put across,had waged war against their own people in collaboration with the Pakistani occupation forces. For three-and-a-half years,until the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the murder of the Mujibnagar leadership,we were happy. Yes,we were clawing our way to the top of the hill,in however tortuous a manner. But we were happy. That happiness was soon reduced to ashes when,in the protective shadow of the nations first military regime and in the name of a restoration of multi-party democracy,all those collaborationist parties and politicians emerged blinking from their dark caves,happy to be allowed to do politics in a country they had once tried murdering with the help of crude men come from an alien land. Irony was getting to be quite thick for us.
A tragic irony we have been assailed with came from the Awami League in early 1975. For a party that had historically waged a tireless movement for a democratic polity in Pakistan and for full,purposeful autonomy to be granted to Bengalis,indeed for a parliamentary system of government in the country,its shift in January 1975 to a one-party system in the country was pretty ironic. The Fourth Amendment to the constitution disappointed and embittered all of us.
Our struggle within Pakistan and then against it was focused on according pre-eminence to participatory government,one in which the people would matter. A tight lid,we assumed,would be put on extra-constitutional means of political change. That did not happen. In proper Pakistani fashion,we began to have our own ambitious military officers informing us on murky dawns that they had taken over,that Bangladesh was under martial law,that the eventual goal of the new regime was to take the country back to democracy. Irony once more; and yet again when,following in the footsteps of Field Marshal Ayub Khan,our indigenous military rulers tried donning civilian clothes,formed political parties and informed us in grandiose terms that democracy had returned to the people. It was nothing of the sort.
And that is not the end of irony. The Awami League goes on enlightening the nation on the secular principles,as enshrined in the constitution adopted in 1972,it means to restore as a follow-up to the annulment of the Fifth and Seventh Amendments to the constitution. That is cheering news,until the leading lights of the government proclaim loudly that while the state will be a secular entity once more,nothing will be done to do away with such factors,injected into the constitution per courtesy of our military rulers,as Bismillah and Islam as state religion.
The Sector Commanders Forum has promised to go on a fast-unto-death if those two thematic ideas remain in the constitution. Notice,though,that one of those commanders is an influential minister in Sheikh Hasinas government. Irony? Or are the gods being unjust to you and me?
The writer is editor,current affairs,The Daily Star,Dhaka; express@expressindia.com
Share
