Commentary: Government must listen to public demand of resignation before violence grips the nation

– Mainul Hosein
Against oppression of dictatorship the third world countries look to the US for hope and help for democracy and respect for human rights. We in Bangladesh whole-heartedly want change to happen peacefully. This can be possible only if the peculiar constitutional provision for making free election impossible is dropped.
The general election should be held like it is held under the parliamentary system everywhere. But this government cannot be trusted with any assurance.
We have been living with lies since Bangladesh’s birth. Within a short time the people were openly denied all rights under a one-party system. The election was a government affair and not for change of government by the people. The opposition party did not exist to challenge the fairness of the election. The people had no voice. There was no independent judiciary for judicial remedy.
The experiment failed soon tragically. But manipulation of elections continued for the hunger for power to enjoy luxurious life never dreamt of and become fabulously rich.
No party could win the next election as a failed government. As long as some kind of popular election was at work neither Awami League nor BNP could remain in power more than one term in turn.
After the system of election was banished, the same Awami League government has been claiming miraculous success but not ready to face the people in a free election.
Under a free election, we want to be wrong but say we will be surprised if Awami League wins more than 20 seats.
Awami League during their long rule without election served only the group interest of theirs. It branded others as anti-freedom and anti-Bangladesh. A free and fair election is necessary to establish that the country is owned by all the people and not only by those few who fled the country and stayed safely away during the whole period of nine months of military operation of Pakistan army on our people.
Yet for a short while some sort of democracy continued in Bangladesh in the beginning. But Awami League has succeeded to amend the Constitution unilaterally to make elections fully controlled by the government. The idea of election was buried. It became a grateful friend of India.
Unfortunately, we have no experienced political leaders with knowledge for running institutions-based democratic government. Such leaders naturally depended and are still depending on anti-democracy bureaucrats for running the government. What politics we have is police politics of arrest and imprisonment.
It was so shocking to our people as they came to believe that our country was invaded in the name of freeing Bangladesh. India led war against Pakistan, defeated the Pakistan army in East Pakistan and Bangladesh was born only to see democracy strangulated.
Now the Constitution has been changed unilaterally to hold elections fully under government control and not a people’s affair to vote. The election became a money game of the government for not facing serious opposition. Corruption and looting banks went on so fearlessly as never before.
The government had no choice but to resort to violence and bloodshed over election fraud. For dictatorship it is convenient to get help from sources known or unknown. We welcome the interest being shown by US and other well wishers of ours to arrange the next general election so that it can be free and fair. We also want to see India’s cooperation in this regard.
The US State Department’s spokesperson Ned Price assured the journalist the other day that they were closely monitoring how the government of Bangladesh is going to keep its promise of holding the next general election in a free and transparent manner. It is too much simplicity to believe in the promise of this government about free election.
Let the government drop the constitutional barrier for popular election now without delay. It must be insisted on that our next general election should be held in the way other parliamentary elections are held by dissolving the parliament.
The unelected and corrupt government has no legitimacy to take time. We cannot ignore how angrily the general people are coming out in the streets demanding immediate resignation of the government. It is not possible to hold the election under an elected government after the parliament is dissolved.
Conspiracy against elections is a big and wide problem but its solution is easy. After dissolution of the parliament no elected government survives. Some sort of unelected caretaker government has to exist during the election. The obvious contradiction is it was Awami League which forced the BNP government to have a caretaker government in the past. But the government’s problem is the crisis of leaving power. We support the popular demand of resignation of the government now before anarchy and violence grip the nation.