Unpleasant Things,
Pleasantly SpeakingBy Sirajul Islam
24 April, 2007
Countercurrents.orgTake a Bangladeshi leader who accuses his or her opponent of breaking law and looting public resources and money, and threatens an agitation or simple elimination. Also add the rulers in the uniform who accuse the same Bangladeshi squabbling politicians misusing state power to make their fortune by loot, and of bullying its opponents and who wants to deploy a new system of governance to make behave the politicians in particular, and other in general to protect the country from ruination. Stir in an increasingly and increasingly undemocratic, all that seeks to eliminate, perhaps even physically, their enemies, be they at home or in exile abroad.
I’m now 51, and a bare couple of decades ago, so far I can remember since my childhood, such ingredients added up to the old, real war in Bangladesh since the War of Independence. History never repeats itself, Mark Twain famously remarked; at best it rhymes. Right now, however, the rhyming in Bangladesh is becoming quite deafening. The military juntas may be no more, and Bangladesh no longer an un-democratic country, but if one study the mix of circumstances now, even a casual historian like me could be forgiven for believing a new problem is upon us than to a solution.
For all the above elements are in place today, as they were back in the 1970s and early 1980s. The patriotic and popular soldiers have overstepped their borders in some way more than necessary, and thunder the master of the all wrongdoers in the country, and as a result, our democracy is in jeopardy, unsafe... such a policy stimulates a new horizon of agitation. The man behind the curtain could have been Gen. Zia or Gen Ershad a generation ago. In fact, it was Gen MU Ahmed, or Gen MU Chowdhury, what it appeared from the press reports and clippings, perhaps now addressing our problem to be solved with a massive wish list. Back in those same early 1980s, the then CAS Gen Ershad sketched out his vision of a share of the armed forces in governing our country in his article published in many newspapers. Today, the serving CAS of the Bangladesh Army Gen MU Ahmed is taking about moulding our own brand of democracy. It is perhaps the first step towards a similar encirclement, aimed at what I cannot understand. I think, there are many confused minds in Bangladesh now like me.
It is true there were many good things done, and many are in the pipeline. But it is also true that many problems are still untouched. It is not my intention to analyse what has been done or what hasn’t been. My concern is that Bangladesh perhaps is rekindling memories of the old military juntas. These days, it is true, some opposition is permitted, but not much. If one likes to criticise the present Fakhruddin government point by point, one may not see the light, or risk sharing ill fate. Despite appearances, however, this is not a return to the past. The real war ended in the storm-tossed streets of Dhaka in December 1990, as I uncomfortably and vividly remember.
Bangladesh democracy staggered on for sixteen years, and though the feuding politicians didn’t bury their hatchets for a moment, our disciplined soldiers did. From that moment, the politicians and the soldiers perhaps no longer regarded each other as better options. Almost 16 years later, that remains the case. This isn't the first time since the end of the autocracy that there's been talk of a new one. Back in the years of democracy, during the years of bickering and squabbling between the two major parties in power, Awami League and BNP, or rather to say, two families, the nation talked of a new order time and again when Bangladesh suffocates of the democratic misrule that were marked by corruption, and weakening or dismantling of many democratic institutions. What I see now is not a return to the old difficulties, but the exacerbation of new ones.
These new difficulties fall far short of rivalry. In rivalry, whether democratic or undemocratic, each side seeks victory. Right now the political forces and the military glare icily at each other, but neither are seeking the elimination of the other. Now they offer rival ideological models; who would be in the state power, the prime battleground of the real tussle, with a democratic autocracy, or autocratic democracy. True, the military, not the militants, or the Awami League or BNP, remains the one institution capable of wiping the others off the face of the Bangladesh polity. But, I think, it has neither the intention nor the incentive to do so. In the bad old days, none knew better than the military's weaknesses of the Bangladesh politics and the limits to its power. That applies to Bangladesh nowadays under the current leadership.
Beyond argument, relations have gone down when Bangladeshi soldiers’ foreign jobs came under threat, and increased pressure from the Western powers to ally Bangladesh in the war on radical Islamist terror. As BNP-Jamaat ally tightened their grip on the government, election commission, judiciary and presidency etc, the representatives of the Western powers handed out ever more frequent lectures about the democracy deficit in Bangladesh, and then perhaps came the plans to install a government of their choice to make it a public understanding that the present world is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign, with a greater and greater contempt for the basic principles of international law. Who likes this? Who is happy about this?" Most certainly nobody, but one has to agree on this if one has to be in power.
The difference now is that Bangladesh can push back. More than a decade ago, under the chaotic Ershad rule, the country almost fell apart. It could bluster, but invariably, and humiliatingly, it had to give in. Thanks to its vast working class, farmers and migrants, and middle-class exporting businesspersons, today's Bangladesh is progressing, self-confident and awash in the commodities everyone hunger after. But the problem was that Bangladesh’s political methods were not pretty. So, the change was evident because Bangladesh didn’t want to alienate herself from the part of the globalised world. So, Bangladesh has to accept the rules of the international community, the rule of law and so on. In that sense we are back to the old game.
Today, the present leaderships in the main parties condemn the military for seeking to meddle in the affairs of its waters, even as it meddles in home and abroad. The military answers in similar vein, even as it opens and shuts the power taps to show who is boss. The military says the queen-bees must let events in the country and elsewhere take their course, but would it sit idly by, were the politicians to actively seek as usual pro-AL or BNP government in the country in near future? The row over the governance issue in Bangladesh should be seen in this context. Both sides' arguments make sense, up to a point. So, the military-backed present government's game plan could not be clearer. It has noted the differences between the good or bad practices in the political governance, and seeks to drive the wedge deeper. But that's not a war between rivals, not even an icy one. It's just a cold shower of reality.
As our military grows ever more confident, accusing the queen-bees of Bangladesh politics corruption and flouting law, they moves to either sent in exile the queen-bees or deploy forces on their doorstep meaning exclusion. So, I could be forgiven for believing that we're back to the bad old days of confrontation again.
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