Democracy on a driverless train: Mainul

Staff Reporter :
Our democracy is on a driverless train. The election itself was farcical and the voters were denied their right of choices in an all party inclusive election.
Explaining his hope to see success of democracy when he responded to the call of armed forces and joined the army backed caretaker government, Barrister Mainul has stated that he saw the joint attempt to restore democratic process after it was derailed for the failure of the political leadership as a good prospect for democracy. Because the army sought our cooperation for saving democracy. Their responsibility was to put the derailed train of democracy back on the track by handing over power to the politicians through an all inclusive election. They succeeded in doing so. It was an honest desire that the political leaders would take the task seriously.
In the talk show at The Independent television channel on Tuesday night, Barrister Mainul Hosein observed as above. The talk show was conducted by well-known journalist Khaled Mohiuddin. The other two participants were Mr. Afsan Chowdhury and Mr. Mezba Kamal, both are famous academics.
Barrister Hosein was critical of those who are abusing the issues of the liberation war
and communalism to divide the nation. As opposed to the view that communalism must first be wiped out the spirit of the liberation war, Barrister Hosein emphasized democracy as the core spirit of the liberation war. He added to say that our people are not communal and it was the rulers of Pakistan who spurred communalism to divide us. A democratic government will be in right position to deal with communalism if it emerges as a problem. But it should not be such that we get rid of communalism before we can talk of democracy. That is the way of destroying democracy and the true spirit of the liberation war. There are some who are anti-communalism, but will not condemn destruction of democracy as anti-liberation spirit.
He is of the opinion that creating fear of communalism or misguiding the people about the spirit of liberation war cannot be acceptable for justifying obliteration of the main spirit of the liberation war that is to say democracy. Barrister Hosein insisted that our people went to liberation war though they were not prepared for the war because democracy could not be achieved through long political struggle.
Those who stole the people’s right to vote to remain in power should be blamed for acting against the spirit of liberation war. Some strong supporters of the spirit of the liberation war do not find anything wrong in the crisis of democracy.
He has said further, the election is about people’s voting right and not a matter of party politics only. The people have been denied the choices of an inclusive election. It is immaterial that the BNP boycotted the election. It was political responsibility of the government to arrange the election as credible to all. President Assad of Syria, or North Korea kind of election is not democracy.