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The politics of marginalisation
***Since our major political parties are not desirably committed to share principles of constitutionalism, we may have to wait for the working class and the peasantry to organise political parties and stronger social movements to push for social equality and justice for ensuring true progress.***
IN Bangladesh do we now witness a strategy of effectively marginalizing a major political party? If that be so, how does that affect the polity and what is the long-term sociopolitical consequence of such a courseofaction?
Cynical observers of the current Bangladeshi political scene entertain grave doubts about a real change in the style and substance of politics in so far as desirable democratic governance scenario is concerned. Their continued pessimism is not without ground as hapless
Bangladeshis sadly watch their guardians unmoved despite the combined onslaught of logic and reason, law and fact.
Politically speaking, the current scene is not the first instance when otherwise responsible and erudite people have talked irrelevantly and irreverently. The tragedy is that we are forgetting that democracy, with freedom of opinion and opposition is not the normal way of organizing society but is a rare human achievement. In our environment, many citizens may appear un-dimensional but our political leaders have no excuse for being so perilously un-dimensional. They have to act as catalyst. The responsibilities, which today lie on their shoulders, are far greater than at any earlier time in our history.
We seem to be oblivious that law moves on a unique plane and that a lawful society reflects man's sense of order and justice. Such society embodies rules and traditions that have a binding effect and provide the enduring element, the dimension of permanence, in history. We cannot have a government without order and there can be no order without law. Viewed in the above context, there is no doubt that the country is
in the midst of a serious crisis and the premonition is that the downward slide to dangerous uncertainty may have commenced.
The country is now sharply and dangerously polarized with political adversaries bent upon maligning each other. The language of reason and moderation is absent while there is hardly any trace of tolerance. This, however, does not come as a surprise as forebodings of a perilous polarization were there for any keen observer to realize. One feels constrained to comment that the country is held hostage to the partisan ambition of an immoral and acquisitive class whose kleptocratic instincts are no secret.
There is no denying that Bangladesh in recent times
has experienced the politics of violence, which in practical terms means resorting to physical violence to promote a political objective. At the same time, we have also seen violence of politics built into the institutional structure of politics despite the ideal that liberal democracy abjures violence of politics.
The rule of law, though a civilising factor, has often led to violence for purposes of governance without ensuring to check indiscriminate use of power in our polity. We have also not seen any serious policy discussion on the phenomenon of violence.
Political violence should call for a political response from the state authorities rather than a police response. The latter may be necessary, but not sufficient. In a situation of large scale institutional malfunctioning, as is feared in our case, politics acquires an appetite for all spaces, both public and private.
Under circumstances as above, all violence becomes political and our state authority relies largely on the police machinery, not only for information gathering pertaining to social conflict and violence but also for the analysis and interpretation of the phenomena of violence in terms of their nature, causes and solutions. As such, the colonially derived significance of the police machinery on such a crucial matter, and its influence in determining the state response to violence, has not been seriously looked into.
It is an unfortunate facet of our political existence that the political class has quite often shifted to the police the burden of providing a response to many socio-political movements, which are essentially an expression of people's aspiration for a life of dignity and self-respect. The Kansat tragedy of the not-too-distant past is a glaring case in point.
Terms such as "law and order," "public order," or "security of state" are often used in Bangladesh to deploy state violence with impunity. The police in our situation tend to make indiscriminate use of the provisions of Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code to disperse unlawful
assemblies even when the demands made by such assemblies are legitimate and lawful. No effective guidelines in law are provided for the use of force to deal with such assemblies, except the general specification that minimum force be used. Such use of force often leads to loss of life and liberty.
Since our major political parties are not desirably committed to share principles of constitutionalism, we may have to wait for the working class and the peasantry to organise political parties and stronger social movements to push for social equality and justice for ensuring true progress.
The writer is a columnist of The Dally Star.