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PERSPECTIVES
Headed for a bumpy, strife-torn and uncertain 2006
Enayet Rasul
12/31/2005
Today is the last day of 2005. Bangladeshis will be waking up in the morrow to observe the first day of a new year - the year 2006. The first day of January is universally celebrated as the new year, a time to be happy, to feel hopeful about the future. Bangladesh and its people cannot be expected to be any different. They would be greeting the arrival of a new year with the same enthusiasm and optimism like the rest of the world. But the sorry thing is that for Bangladeshis the joys and expectation of a fresh new year are very likely to be short lived. For a political crisis has been looming over Bangladesh throughout the last year. Only its intensification, macabre twists and turns and destructiveness are to be expected to turn to worse and then to worst in the coming months.
The celebration of the new year will be followed by the religious festival of Eid-ul-Azha. Political forces opposed to the government and the ruling party have set a deadline of 22 January . They would not want to ruffle people and prevent them from observing Eid. December and January are also the months of examinations and admissions in academic institutions when any violence or anarchic conditions are most disliked by people. Thus, calculating all of these sentiments, the Awami League and other parties who are daggers drawn so far as the ruling BNP is concerned, declared 22 January as the threshold for the acceptance of their demands. Once it is crossed and they do not sense victory, meaning if the ruling party does not give in to their demands , then they have taken every preparation, it seems, to trigger an all out movement at the centerpiece of which could be non stop hartals to force the government to resign. In all likelihood, the government is unlikely to let the opposition have their way and, in that case, the confrontation could take an uglier and uglier turn and plunge the country into grave instability.
No one knows what course the troubles will exactly take. Only one thing can be predicted : the very great likelihood of a progression in the confrontation between the two sides without a let up that would pull down the country's economy as fast. For the opposition's enforcement of non stop work stoppages or making the economy paralytical or dysfunctional, the insensitivity of the incumbents in power to such developments and their stubbornness in clinging to power despite the costs to the country or the economy, could indeed prove to be very tragic in the end. As things are now, the hardened mind sets on the two sides and their seeming intention to fight to the finish, could take a very heavy toll on the country in all respects.
All kinds of scenarios or phases in the political struggle are being predicted in the new year. According to reports in newspapers, opposition leader Sheikh Hasina has only 17 more days to join parliament. The government is getting ready to call parliament into session in January and this could be a long session stretching over a month. If Sheikh Hasina decides not to attend parliament, as always, beyond 17 days, then she would lose her membership in it and her seat would stand vacated. The same would happen to all or nearly all her party colleagues who are also MPs. The government would then be faced with a choice : to organize elections for the vacant seats or to ask the President to dissolve parliament and hand over power to the caretaker government for it to hold general elections before its scheduled time in 2007. Government leaders have been sounding very firm in their reiterations that they would remain in power till the last day of their normal tenure. This means they may go for elections in the vacant seats of the opposition MPs. This move is certain to be resisted harder by the Awami League and its alliance partners. In that case, the country could be thrown into a very serious strife-torn situation.
Even if the government decides to go for general elections before the scheduled time by dissolving the parliament-- immediately following the seats of the opposition becoming vacant in it for abstention beyond the stipulated number of days-- then that move would also not pacify the situation. For the opposition not only wants the government to resign immediately but it also wants the incumbent government to carry out such measures as would make the successor caretaker government acceptable to them. But how the government will reform the caretaker government if the opposition refuses to have minimum dialogue with the government about how it wants the reforms to be done ? The government, therefore, may have no choice but to transfer power to a caretaker government in the manner the constitution of the country presently ordains and this would not be acceptable to the opposition. Thus, there is no guarantee either that the takeover by a caretaker government for holding polls, earlier than the schedule, will put a cap on the troubles, albeit temporarily.
Speculations are also circulating about extraordinary developments. The former US Ambassador to Bangladesh alluded before his departure the likelihood of an unconstitutional takeover in Bangladesh if the politicians fail to come to a common minimum agreement about elections and other issues. There are also speculations about declaration of emergency by the government on the plea of an unique situation. But such a declaration will strengthen the hands of the government to remain in power longer than its normally granted tenure. More significantly, it will also give it totalitarian powers to deal with the opposition as it likes. The opposition could decide to resist the application of special powers to be acquired by the government from declaration of a state of emergency. If this happens, then conditions in the country in all respects are likely to decline to a worst point in no time.
Apart from the above scenarios, the activities of the so called Jehadis would be posing a very serious security threat to the country. The few successes of the law enforcement bodies against the terrorists in 2005 ought not to create any sense of deliverance from the threat. It would be wrong to assume that the terrorist elements are on the run or their networks have been adequately smashed. Most of them, including their top leaders are still at large. The same applies for most of the members of the terrorist organizations at the lower, middle and higher rungs. They remain free men with their killing potential fairly intact. A lull is noted in their activities following arrests of some of their leaders and discoveries of their armouries. But the terrorists are only probably revising their strategies and reorganizing and recovering from whatever dents they suffered at the hands of police and RAB. But if the momentum in arresting the main terrorist leaders and seizing their arsenals is not maintained or cannot be maintained , then they are certain to revive with even deadlier force in the new year.
Thus, it should be clear why the year 2006 could prove to be a particularly distressing one for Bangladesh. It does not require an occultist or a fortune-teller to gaze at the crystal ball to foresee what could happen to this country in the coming year. Any sensible analysis of the sequences of events that have been plaguing it and their lingering potentials would lead an analyst to anticipate rather grave conditions to prevail in Bangladesh in the new year.
The only silver lining is that Bangladeshis have faced many serious crises over the years. Every time they could respond to the occasion even though sometimes in the final hour. Hopefully, they will do so again as realization dawns how they would be steering the country over the cliff if they do not do so again.
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