PM should be happy to follow her own logic by holding free election to prove people’s love for her – Mainul Hosein
Whenever the foreign journalists interview Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and ask questions about the allegations against her, she consistently challenges them to prove the allegations by providing facts. Then she should use her own logic to prove her claim that people love her by holding free and impartial election.
In reality, she has changed the Constitution so that she does not have to face free election under a non-partisan caretaker government. The free election is the constitutional mandate necessary for forming people’s government. It is also a requirement of the UN Charter. So, the demand for free and fair election is nothing personal or party politics. Refusing to hold free election is a conspiracy against the people denying them their right to elect the government of their own choice.
By giving their vote in favour of the leader, they can judge his or her ability and honesty to serve them. The fact that it is not possible to hold free and fair election has been assured by changing the Constitution itself. The truth of this is well documented and needs no proof.
To hold the election under a neutral caretaker government is a deterrent against move to win election by election robbery. Therefore, it should be taken as a genuine concern of the foreign governments and international community to insist on the arrangement of free and fair election as the Constitution has been amended making free and impartial election impossible.
It is very worrying to witness the dangerous confrontational party politics every day and use of police brutality by the government against those who want to restore the constitutional right of the people to have free election. No hesitation was shown in using police power to arrest Supreme Court lawyers even over the disputed election of their own professional Supreme Court Bar Association.
It is no doubt disagreeable for the lawyers disunited in the court premises for their party politics outside. But that is how intolerant muscle power politics is spreading everywhere. The party politics in our country has ceased to be an intellectual debate. What is truth and what is not does not matter. Street clashes and police arrests have become the language of politics.
No foreign government is trying to change the government as such or reinstate a government of their own choice in Bangladesh. They want to protect the people’s right to elect their government peacefully. Opposing violation of human rights as well as protecting human rights is a universal obligation worldwide.
Neither the opposition parties nor the members of the intelligentsia are asking transfer of power to any opposition political party. They want free and fair election for all so that the party or parties enjoying people’s “love” can win and form the people’s government.
There is no necessity for the government to degrade and demean itself or the people before the world. Our people are not so stupid that they have to learn from others what free and fair election is. Our people paid supreme price for democracy and their democratic rights. But they have been betrayed and denied their democratic rights by those leaders whom they trusted most.
Holding free election will help the prime minister’s bold claim about people’s love for her. It will also save the country from the impending cataclysmic violence.
In effect the foreign governments are helping her to use her own argument of proving her claim that people love her. She can prove it only by allowing free and fair election.
Our educated sections of people, like in the past, must not go to sleep and see the country sliding into terrible violence and anarchy threatening lives and people’s property only because the corrupt and wrong-headed persons think they know the best. They are using politics to become fabulously rich and prosperous.