Politicians confident, not the people
Syed Badrul Ahsan
There is a perceptible surfeit of self-confidence in the nation's political classes these days.
When you observe the ruling Awami League, you are quite surprised by the self-assurance with which its leading lights speak of the future, of the party's future. And then watch the opposition. Within its councils, there is that sure sense that the time is here for a storming of the ramparts, for a final, grand push for glory. Which is of course all very good, even a trifle inspirational.
Nations which suffer from an absence of politicians confident in their ability to mould the future to their liking are societies condemned to live out their times in the sun in dreary dejection. Ours happens to be a land where politics constantly and insistently operates in varied thrilling ways. In short, politics in Bangladesh may have slipped to the level of the mediocre, but you cannot quite say that the drama has gone out of it. The thrills are yet there, and they do some wonderful things to our souls.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's confidence in her ability to steer the ship of state and have it drop anchor on happy shores cheers us to no end. She has just informed us, yet once again, that the next spate of general elections in Bangladesh will be held under the present government, her own, and that there will be no room for a caretaker administration to fill the interregnum between the end of the term of the present parliament and a fresh new round of voting at the national level.
Her self-confidence is remarkable, for she has made it clear -- and she believes she is right -- that the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party must take part in the elections if it means to remain part of the political process. As citizens, we honestly trust that her judgement will turn out to have been fashioned on a correct reading of the national pulse, that her government will push on with its plans to give the country a credible election. One only wishes that her confidence were infectious, that we could truly believe the prime minister will be able to pull off a coup, of sorts. Her confidence is her own. Somehow it does not seem to be percolating down to us. And there's the pity.
Now watch BNP chief Khaleda Zia's spirited demonstration of self-confidence. She predicts that the days of this government are numbered, that it will soon fall on its face, indeed that by September next year the nation will be celebrating its triumph through pushing Sheikh Hasina and her administration out of office. You would think, listening to Khaleda and her acolytes, that we happen to inhabit some despot-driven spot somewhere in the Middle East where the winds of a new spring blow, of the kind that brought down Hosni Mubarak and Zine al Abidine Ben Ali.
The leader of the opposition has absolutely no time to speak for her party's constituents in parliament. Nor is there any sign of a willingness to do so. Obviously, she and her party colleagues are little inclined to explain why they have thus turned their backs on those who sent them, in however diminished a number, to the legislature in the last election. They will not go to parliament and yet they are reluctant to give up their seats. But, of course, they are confident, all of them, that the next electoral exercise will be conducted by a caretaker government, that those holding power today will come by no more than 30 seats, that indeed the Bangladeshi nationalists will lead the country once more into the future. They are not willing to explain their past.
Confidence, then, is in the air -- everywhere you look around, in every sight and in every sound. There was a moment in times past when Hasina was confident that the caretaker system would propel Bangladesh toward liberal, secular democracy. For Khaleda, confidence was in decrying the call for a caretaker form of government as sheer naivete or the ravings of a lunatic. Sit back and reflect on how the tables have turned, on how ideas have risen or fallen, on how irony has made inroads into national politics.
In all this quotidian demonstration of confidence and self-assurance on the part of the nation's leading politicians, it is the self-confidence of the hapless citizens which has plumbed the depths. Their self-esteem is low.
The future, for them, always comes in dark shades of the past. The centre cannot hold. The world caves in. Life loses much of its meaning in the tumult of rising prices, relentless corruption and ubiquitous political uncertainty.
And we succumb to the shrill call of somnambulism in the gathering night.
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=204977
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