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Ruling AL should play the game

Syed Fattahul Alim
THE two major events of last week, US envoy Nisha Desai's three-day Dhaka visit and Khaleda Zia-led opposition delegation's meeting with the president, though they could not break the prevailing political deadlock, did at least present the country with a week free from hartal and its attendant violence.
When the US envoy was explaining her government's
position about the upcoming Bangladesh election, putting more emphasis on the urgency of a dialogue than forming polls-time administration, the president of ruling AL Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was busy forming her 'all-party' interim cabinet to run the next election. And the opposition leader Khaleda Zia's plea for initiating talks made to the president could not yet draw expected response. Thus the PM proved wrong all speculations tinged with the optimism that some formula to finally accommodate the opposition BNP in the upcoming election process would come about. She rather went ahead with renaming her old government, albeit in a somewhat shrunken and reorganised shape, as an 'all-party' election-time government.
Before that was, we all know, the farce of ministers' resignation followed by an attempt to qualify such action with the phrase, 'intention' of resignation, in the face of questions raised in the media and among constitutional experts on the constitutionality of the exercise. It was a travesty of democratic norms, even of morality, to have resorted
to such play of words to bypass an issue of serious constitutional implications. Small wonder it prompted a constitutional expert and one of the framers of constitution, Dr. Kamal Hossain, to say with irony: "There is only one individual in the country - it is the constitution what she says and it is the constitution what she does!"
Dictators have no faith in matters of principle or morality in their kind of politics. In order to usurp or stay in power, they would rather try to score points by breaking rules and trampling principles. But one man’s meat is another man's poison. Former dictator Ershad, who is now a prized possession of ruling AL in its 'allparty' bandwagon, knows it too well to share it with AL. AL or its leadership certainly does not want to be in a dictator's shoes and play its game in the next general election!
Why the ruling party did resort to such a strange political manoeuvre is beyond comprehension. If anything, the public and political observers at home and abroad will smell only deceit and dishonesty and nothing good in it. And it is going to cost it dearly in the longer term. If truth be told, it has been even worse than Jatiya Party
chairman Ershad's last political somersault, which was only predictable.
If we compare election with the game of say, wrestling, the ruling party is trying to create such a condition that its major contestant, the opposition BNP, may not participate in the game. The strategy is clear: to ensure that it (ruling party) may get a walkover. But there is a catch. Unlike in a game of wrestling, the spectators, the public, are not passive onlookers here. They also participate in the game by casting their votes. And the voters supporting the absent player in the election won't simply leave the ground without being satisfied why their favourite contestant failed to appear. In fact, the real trouble will start not before -- as the opposition is threatening and what the ruling party is daring it to do -- but after the game. The victory, on which the present ruling party seems to be hell bent, if ultimately won in this manner, would be one in a technical sense, but a defeat in moral terms. It would be as shameful as it had been for the present opposition BNP, in the February 1996 election (when they were in power), or even
worse. Why do the ruling AL and its leadership think things will be different this time? Or are they being driven by some dark force beyond their control to commit this avoidable mistake?
To take advantage of the mistakes committed by the opponent is but the beauty of the electoral game. But such advantages have to be counted in terms of the number of opposition constituencies or votes gained by playing according to the rules of the game and not by breaking the rules, or even by spoiling the entire game itself. The ruling AL is, in effect, trying to spoil the whole game. And this is where the moral defeat starts from.
Whichever quarter might be influencing the ruling party to play games with basic rules of democratic politics and thus goading it into the dark world of intrigues and machination, cannot be a friend of sane and clean politics. It must get out of its clutch and play the game by taking the main opposition into confidence in the 10th Jatiya Sansad election.
The writer is Editor, Science & Life, The Daily Star.
E-mail: sfalim.ds@gmail.com