Begum Zia’s formula . . . and the holes in it

Former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia remains obsessed with an army role in constitutional politics. One certainly understands her preoccupation with the idea of democracy, but when she insists at every given moment that the military must have a role in the determination of the nature of present and future governance, she gives citizens cause for worry. Her camp followers will of course argue, in her defence, that elections cannot be fair in the country without the soldiers being around.

That begs the question: since when have soldiers, in this country as also elsewhere, infused ideas of pluralism in societies? And when you begin to believe that the army can indeed be the machine for the arrival of democracy in Bangladesh, you really have got your priorities jumbled up. We have had the instance of soldiers, in the times of General Ziaur Rahman and General Hussein Muhammad Ershad, stepping in to create conditions 'conducive' to a return to democracy. We know what happened. The ramifications were terrible. The State was brutalized; its fundamental principles were smashed and democracy as we understand it ceased to be.

When Begum Zia speaks of free and fair elections, citizens understand her concerns and indeed share those concerns with her. No democracy conveys any meaning when it is not based on the right of citizens to elect their public representatives. It was a thought that came to millions of citizens in early 2014, when the expectation was that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party would participate in the general election and thereby make its contribution to the growth of participatory governance. It chose to stay away from the vote, insisting that power be handed over to a caretaker government before the voting could take place.

All these years after 1991, when the Shahabuddin caretaker regime presided over a return to democratic government, and after all the other caretaker administrations that ran the pre-election shows between 1996 and 2008, it is rather frivolous to ask that another such arrangement be there every time a general election looms. One quite agrees that the Awami League, in its new stint in power between 2009 and 2014, would have done well through engaging the parliamentary opposition in deliberations on the future of the caretaker arrangement. That it chose not to do that was unfortunate, but that it did away with the caretaker system was quite in order. It had a majority in Parliament and it exercised it. Nothing of the illegal or extra-constitutional came into it.

It is a tenuous democracy and a fragile political system which must see, every five years, an elected government handing over power for ninety days to an administration that is not elected and that therefore is not transparent and is not accountable to the electorate. It was fine as long as the caretaker system lasted, but to have carried on with it for eternity would have been a joke perpetrated on the republic. Remember, if you will, that there was supposed to be no more caretaker system once the general election of February 1991, which brought the BNP to power, had settled the question of a democratic revival in the country. But then the BNP made a mess of things in Magura in 1994. The caretakers came back two years later.

The BNP should have learned from the consequences of its mistakes. It did not, as the end of its last period in government in 2006 was to demonstrate so conclusively. It did not stop President Iajuddin Ahmed from taking over, in questionable manner, as Chief Advisor in October 2006. It did nothing to discourage the Justice Aziz-led Election Commission from falsifying voters' lists with the inclusion of dead and non-existent people. The consequences were cataclysmic, for the BNP. The arrival of the Fakhruddin Ahmed caretaker government in January 2007, with the active support of the military, was effectively a severe reprimand of the BNP.

Note that the election of December 2008 was supervised by the army, in its role as political enforcer. It did not do Begum Zia and her party any good. And yet she now demands that the army be around to reassure us about the presence of a democratic order in the country. That is a clear lack of faith in democratic institutions and constitutional continuity. Worse, the demand stems from the belief that a dependence on the army at the polling booths will be a surefire way for the BNP to come back to power. People are quite cognizant of the harsh truths around them in these present times. The outgoing Election Commission has not lived up to popular expectations; the Anti-Corruption Commission is not what it should have been; the ruling Awami League's high-handedness in the exercise of power has been pretty perceptible; more democracy is what the country is in grave need of.

But calling for the army to step in or to be permitted to step in is in a very subtle way sending out the message that we the people of Bangladesh should open our doors to the sort of political asphyxiation as that which has defined some of our neighbouring countries. Soldiers have broken the back of Myanmar over long decades, have pushed Thailand back into uncertainty, have perpetually informed Pakistanis that beyond and above everything it is their military which matters. Bangladesh's army is a fine professional force led by dedicated, bold and intellectual officers and should be kept that way. It has come to the aid of the civil administration in times of natural disasters. It has undertaken development work, to public satisfaction. It has helped maintain peace in some of the most dangerous regions of the world. Let us let it be.

Begum Zia has also suggested that the formation of the next Election Commission be based on a consensus reached by 'all parties'. That idea of a consensus is laudable, up to a point. But all parties which have been represented in Parliament since the country achieved independence? We have had the nauseous experience of the Jamaat-e-Islami occupying seats in Parliament and in the cabinet. The notorious Freedom Party, a cabal of Bangabandhu's killers, was in Parliament too in early 1996. So should the ruling Awami League seriously be expected to give space to a party whose principal leaders have already been executed on charges of war crimes? Does the BNP Chairperson truly think that the assassins of 1975 should be rehabilitated in the guise of a consensus geared to putting a new Election Commission in place? The BNP has never expressed any contrition over its rehabilitation of the 1971 collaborators of the Pakistan occupation army. It has never been embarrassed by its decades-long protection, per courtesy of the infamous Indemnity Act and Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, of the assassins of the Father of the Nation. Why should it then expect to be taken seriously when it calls for a 'return to democracy'?

Not everything in national politics at present is perfect. The ruling Awami League has stumbled in quite a number of places. To be sure, 153 of its lawmakers were not elected in January 2014 (because the BNP acted petulant in the run-up to the elections). Of course governance needs to be a better proposition than it has been so far. And, yes, we need a highly assertive Election Commission, of the kind ATM Shamsul Huda headed in the last caretaker period. A purposeful Anti-Corruption Commission is called for. The National Human Rights Commission is in need of stronger teeth. 'Shoot-outs' and 'encounters' can only undermine the nation's security forces.

It is a whole plate which needs to be washed clean of the dirt that has accumulated. No one is in denial mode here.

But the BNP, in its present state of despondency, is not the party to induce the government into bringing about the necessary reforms. And it is not — because it has not had the time or the inclination to go for self-introspection. It has not deemed it proper to examine the causes why it has remained out of power, on the fringes, for the past decade. It has made terrible mistakes, both in its years in power and out of it. The unfortunate bit is that it does not acknowledge those mistakes.

It is bad enough when a political party loses power. It is worse when it does not know, or does not seek to know, why it has lost power.