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STRATEGICALLY SPEAKING

Impending election, CTG and 1/11

The nation has been left with a fait accompli. Take it or lump it. What is the alternative if the choice happens to offer nothing better than the devil or the deep sea?
Ever since the election of 2009, the political discourse has centered entirely only on the way the election is
going to be held in 2014. And in that context the CTG, for understandable reasons, is being demonised and projected as a possible precursor of another 1 /11 by the AL.
We are not only confused but apprehensive about the direction we are heading towards. The uncertainties that visited us seven years ago at the fag end of BNP regime are revisiting us, and we are worried too that the same situation might revisit us like the one in 2006, because the same folly that prejudiced the thoughts of the BNP at that time seems to have engulfed the mind of the AL too.
And that stems from the supreme overconfidence of the ruling alliance; not so much from its performance of the last four years but from its perceived ability to ramrod an election come what may, mirror imaging the behaviour of the BNP and its alliance in 2006.
Or perhaps the ruling alliance is unwilling to credit the BNP and its partners with the ability of the AL's, to precipitate a situation as would allow no other alternative but a stopgap arrangement; perhaps through a presidential decree.
Our confusion occurs from vari-
ous comments regarding the manner of holding the next election coming forth up to now from all levels of leadership of the AL and its partners. Having come out with different views so long, it seems that they all have now fallen in line with what the PM and leader of the ruling coalition had said, or rather left unsaid, about the next election in her speech marking the end of the fourth year of the alliance rule.
The Supreme Court verdict on the 5th Amendment and the 15th
Amendment is a good pretext for the AL and its allies for not reassessing the issue. The law minister's recent comment is a case in point, as if the Constitution is a consecrated document that cannot be altered. And any reference to the Supreme Court's suggestion of holding the next two elections under a caretaker government, notwithstanding it being declared by the same court as being "in conflict with the constitution," is carefully avoided.
In citing the successful holding of various elections in the last four years what the PM did not say, but conveyed eminently well, was the AL's position on the conduct of next election. It seems that the seal of finality have been put by the PM on the modus of the next election,
forcefully reconfirmed by two of her ministers soon after her speech.
One wonders whether the PM will remain as rigid as her current pronouncements suggest, certainly since she cannot be oblivious of the potential direction the respective stands of the two parties are taking the country towards.
The BNP likewise seems to have left no space for the government to manoeuver by saying that it will talk on nothing else but a caretaker government, and at the same time
threatening to bring down the government through "mass upheaval."
Thus the nation has been left with a fait accompli. Take it or lump it. What is the alternative if the choice happens to offer nothing better than the devil or the deep sea?
One fails to see why a caretaker system should automatically mean another 1/11? The specter of 1/11 is being projected again. And that too by a party that has not only taken credit for the dispensation that followed but has been the greatest beneficiary of it. But what is perhaps most disquieting is the hint of military intervention in the event of the parties failing to uphold the political process.
Is it a display of intellectual bankruptcy to suggest military as being the alternative to the potential polit-
ical impasse the germination of which has already started? Or is there an ulterior motive in articulating such a possibility?
There are clearly two options before the AL. First, hold elections as per the provisions of the 15th Amendment, and second, give in to the opposition demand for CTG. The former presupposes the AL's ability to not only hold the elections but also absorb the resultant uncertain developments. And here perhaps the AL and its allies are banking on their perceived inability of the BNP to not only thwart holding of elections, as was done by the AL in 2006, but also to create enough trouble to nullify the results and go for fresh elections.
Frankly, even for the most inveterate democrat, it would be hard to accept a situation where elections are held with the current parliament in vogue.
The second option, and more peaceful even if that, to some AL stalwarts, means 'swallowing pride.' And here the BNP too must move away from its rigid stand on CTG. What the public is interested in is an election under a system that would ensure a fair and participatory election, whether it is called caretaker or interim matters little.
As for the election run under a non-elected dispensation, AL's reluctance to do so now seems absurd; they having benefited from the same on two occasions.
The writer Is Editor, Oped & Strategic Issues, The Daily Star.