[This was published in the leading
Weekly Dhaka Courier, Volume 29, and Issue 7 on 31 August 2012]
‘People have rejected both Sheikh
Hasina and Khaleda Zia and now they are eagerly awaiting a third force. .Jatio
Party is in a position to fill in the blank and we will contest all the three
hundred seats in the elections to 10th Parliament alone (singularly)
instead of being allied with any alliance’. This was the voicing of Jatio Party
Chairman and former President HM Ershad, which he made at Rangpur, far and wide
known as the garrison of Jatio Party, just few days ahead of his official visit
to India
at the latter’s invitation from August 13-17, 2012. Although the climax of Dr. Yunus’
Minius Two Formula intended for ‘arbitrary and motivational expulsion of Sheikh
Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia from their motherland and, thus, keep them at bay
sine die from poking their noses into the affairs of politics in Bangladesh’
and the finale of HM Ershad’s ‘Rejection of two ladies by the people’ prima facie
appear to be identical, in-depth studies unfurl that they are not so as a whole.
To Dr. Yunus’ Minus Two Formula ‘ends
justifies the means” but to Ershad’s understanding of People’s rejection of
Two Women Leaders ‘means justifies the
ends”.
Hence, Ershad’s saying is
politically sharp, matured and polished because, unlike Dr. Yunus’ third force
called Nagarik Shakti (a new political force which was not in existence before)
as an alternative to AL and BNP, Ershad’s ‘third force’ denotes ‘coming forward
of Jatio Party (a party in existence since 1986 having its presence sometimes with
the majority seats and at times with a considerable number of seats in all the
parliaments, starting from 3rd to 9th save the 6th
one because of its boycott by all the political parties) in a democratic order
and mode as a dependable alternative to AL and BNP’. That's why, Ershad’s approach
is very much in consonance with spirit of the clause A of article 7 of the
Constitution made through the Constitution (Fifteenth Amendment) Act of 2011.
Therefore, the queries are, why did
Ershad fell it necessary to air it again at this very moment (because he
uttered this in the past more than hundred times) when he is still tagged with
the ruling grand alliance as its major component having 30 seats in the 9th
Parliament? Is he serious to mean it? Or is it just a saying for the sake of
saying to boost and gear up the emotion and pulse of the ranks and files of his
party? What are the end products of his historic visit to India? Will it
add expected dividends to the treasury of Jatio party since, sadly enough, in
the politics of today’s Bangladesh India is being considered the most decisive
factor by our political leaders, parties, medias and intelligentsia irrespective
of the standing of right, left, entre, centre-right and/or centre-left? Or will
it meet with the immediate political survival of Ershad merely as a person? And
last of all, is Ershad entirely ready to organize Jatio Party infusing into it
all possible sorts of democratic orders in action not merely in words for which
it, like other parties, has also got a very lively, fascinating, up to date but
sleeping constitution? Can Ershad rightly stand for the causes of Bangladesh and
her people? But, as ill luck would have it, what Ershad last of all shall
produce cannot be ascertained at present because-----------
*HM Ershad is the most unpredictable
personality in the politics of Bangladesh.
He earned a title of ‘Cancellation of my last announcement(CMLA, which actually
denotes Chief Martial Law Administrator in a martial government)’ for his quick
change of mind and decision during his nine years of rule and the legacy of
which he has been carrying faithfully and honestly till the date. So, at the
outset, Ershad has to prove and set example that he has come out of his long
time stigma of the habit of practicing CMLA.
*While in power he earned fame for
becoming a dreamer of developments. Even his arch critics hardly hesitate to
give him credits, if not publicly but in private conversations indeed, for his
successes in running the administration. People remember the developments of
Ershad era. Introduction of upzila system and incorporation of Islam as state
religion were his two millstone achievements, which now are well-accepted by
all the leading political parties in Bangladesh. He was on all accounts
a good administrator and statesman and people of these days like to see him as a
statesman in the opposition as well. But, unfortunately, his ongoing standing
with all his essentials and peculiarities in the politics of Bangladesh
makes a sharp departure from his past glorious chapter. Sometimes he, perhaps,
emotionally or inadvertently or recklessly misses to think or attach due
importance to the reality that a leader like him should be above all sorts of
propensities that may cause havoc to his moral standing and stature before the
nation for the reason that a leader has to move and lead a life making him
first of all a befitting example to the people and in particular to the rising
generation irrespective of age, caste, creed and religion. Off and often he dies
into oblivion that he is not only his own property but also a valuable resource
for Jatio Party and Bangladesh.
Here Ershad himself is his sworn adversary
whereas he is knowledgeable, experienced, sharp, cunning, persevering,
articulated, soft, sober, poetic and fond of love having a childlike bent of
mind. There is a peculiar kind of chemistry in him and, may be, he is/has to
grapple most of the time with the disproportionate ingredients of chemical
composition, knowingly or unknowingly. It’s a question of understanding of the
meanings of ‘one cannot but do it’ and ‘one can or cannot do it’. Former speaks
of one’s involuntary state of helplessness before his irresistible impulse
while the latter is voluntary state of standing that leaves matters to his will.
If Ershad is a natural prey to the former then he is not at fault setting him
as a helpless human being to the dominance of ‘irresistible impulse’. If he is
within the zone of the latter then he has no excuse for what he prefers to do
that may malign himself with its instant feedbacks on the party. Let the truth
come to light. Hardly there is any debate that people understand and see that he
never feels shy of talking publicly about his privacy in life. Taking Himalayan
initiative to assassinate his own character he finds pleasures as if ‘a historic
self-character assassinator’ moving and rolling caring none around. Really
nobody can match Ershad in this race!!
*Ershad is the founder of Jatio
Party. Unlike Ziaur Rahman, he, while in power, did not pay attention to the
building and nursing of JP as a grass-roots political party. He rather depended
heavily on army and civil bureaucracies, even though he had elected representatives
both at national Parliament and local bodies. Realization of making JP a
broad-based popular party dawned in his mind after the great fall of 06
December 1990. JP began to swell in a new democratic atmosphere of
Parliamentary System of Government under the stewardship of veteran politician
and statesman Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury who in absence of imprisoned Ershad
played historic role as Acting Chairman of JP.
To speak the truth, JP started
facing tribulations organizationally and politically when Ershad came out of
jail after a lapse of almost six years in 1996.He became desperate to take the
so-called sole hold of his party eliminating the bases of senior leaders such as
Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury, Moudud Ahmed, Kazi Jafar Ahmed, Shah Moazzam Hossain,
Anwar Hossain Munju (who is running with a faction of Jatio Party under the
banner of JP following a verdict of the court. Because of this verdict of the
court Ershad-led JP now came to be known as Jatio Party) in particular. .As he
has a strong inherent leaning towards suspicions, whisperings, distrusts, as he
is caring sycophancy and cronyism, he without delay applied such
self-destructive weapons wounding also those who were sincere and committed to
JP and to him. Resultantly, he had to lose many a brilliant heavy weight within
three years while others became inactive and less interested in the affairs of
the party. His dam-care attitude and gesture is constantly passing message to
all in the party that ‘Jatio party is mine and I am alone its decision-maker,
policy-maker and distributor of posts and positions. I survive, therefore,
Jatio Party survives. I am the first and last words here’. More pains-giving is
that his gun is all the time aimed at the sincere, dedicated, honest stocks of the
party. Nobody knows when his services are to be declared ‘required no more’.
Once in 1998 Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury warned stating that ‘Ershad is tidy
enough to preside over the squeezing or winding up of Jatio Party’. Let Ershad
and JP realize what is the reality today in 2012?
It is said that Ershad was the first
statesman in independent Bangladesh
who succeeded in bringing the possible best products of his time in the
politics of Bangladesh
under the fold of JP and his Council of Ministers. Likely, it is also true that
he is the only leader in Bangladesh
who lost, and still is losing, heavy weights from the party when he is alive
and he himself is leading the party. Frequent expulsion and re-induction of
leaders from local unit to the Presidium, highest policy-making body, is a
natural course of action on the one hand and on the other induction of new
faces---partisan or non-partisan, political or non-political—through
distribution of portfolio of leadership at will without due assessment and
consideration is also a devastating phenomenon here. To our utter surprise,
even a member of the Presidium fails to say readily the number of the members
of the Presidium. Even some of them do not care to attend the meetings
regularly on many lame excuses. It is as if ‘British House of Lords’ in Bangladesh
perspective. Pictures are almost same in cases of Central Executive body and
Advisory body of Jatio Party. It is also
attention-grabbing that JP is the only party in the political firmament of Bangladesh that
has a full-time Acting Chairman while its Chairman is active and functional. On
many occasions they do attend together and deliver speeches. Even this office
moves from person to person as per will of Ershad. Now the turn is for his
brother GM Quader who is also holding the office of Commerce Minister in the
ruling grand alliance. Why does it take
place? Answer is full of ambiguous
*Jatio Party is a moderate
centre-right party. Ideologically it is close to BNP. Ershad had a golden
opportunity to stand in-between the stands of AL and BNP by striking a formula
to set and place both Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman and Freedom fighter
Ziaur Rahman giving due weights to the history and war of independence leading
to war of liberation. He spoke many times about this but he either did not dare
or did not want to handle it in practice for the reasons, known or unknown.
Here he proved himself timid and escapist and thus he lost the golden chance to
place him in history otherwise too.
*Ershad makes it out mathematically
that he has no way but to rebuild, revitalize the party with its own
distinctive stand, policies and programs. Nevertheless, he at present better
likes to follow a compromise formula to live with the alliance in power because
he is very much frightened about his personal fate than his political fate,
which is in chain by cases, mostly political in nature. Is he a ‘Jail phobic
leader”? When he faces the ranks and files in the party, he confidently assures
them of herculean drives to infuse blood into the skeleton of the party but very
soon tunes to the old habit of practicing CMLA. Who will make him understand
again and again that an organized JP is the best practicable answer to all the
cases and conspiracies leveled against him? Cannot he take lesson from Sheikh
Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia on this issue?
*To Ershad neither Sheikh Hasina nor
Begum Khaleda Zia appears to be friendly politically. Once in 2000 he sided
with BNP but experienced a lot of unbecoming happenings that made him realize
that he is not safe to BNP. His living with AL is also painful in most of the cases but
he could not express himself freely in most of the time. He did not get due
share of seats from AL
during the last elections to Parliament. Moreover, elections results were most
frustrating for him as AL won more than
two-thirds majority seats in Parliament making him virtually impotent
politically for AL.
He received shock at the time of formation of Council of Ministers because
Hasina took his bother GM Quader on other grounds and did not pay any heed to
Ershad’s requests and proposals. Alas! his last hope of becoming President of
Bangladesh was also foiled and he had to console himself by uttering that he
had nothing to say if a veteran, experienced tested leader of AL like Zillur Rahaman was nominated and
voted to the august office. He has been under a spell of political suffocation
and strangulation and such trends are on in a cumulative frequency.
*A person of 35 or below does not
know much about the heydays of Ershad. To them Ershad is a past tense and his
glorious past is sleeping in the womb of the past. Therefore, he has to make
him ‘present tense’ for generating confidence in them as they constitute a
considerable amount of vote-bank. He must confess that he has advertently or
inadvertently or recklessly made his world squeezed. JP’s presence in and
acceptance to various professional bodies, associations, wings, think-tanks and
civil societies are almost marginal. Its front and associate wings and bodies,
units and roots at cities, towns, wards, districts, upzilaa, unions and village
are mostly either paper-based or disordered noticeably. It is true that when a
party decides to live with the past and undermines or sets aside the present it
is then almost dead. Organizationally and politically, Ershad is not in a
position to cash and store the love and support of the people at large. Shockingly
enough, JP’s standing at Ershad’s home town Rangpur that played the leading
role in reviving JP after its fall is on the wane too.
*This is an era of the politics of
alliance where electoral politics is pointedly divided into alliances. No
single party even like AL and BNP can think of contesting all the three hundred
seats in Parliament at its own. Then Ershad’s dream of contesting three hundred
seats in Parliament standing on its own without being a partner to any alliance
is nothing but a day dream. He should not get involved in such useless talks at
all. He should pragmatically be visionary in politics. In view of that if
Ershad fails to pay due attention to all these realties urgently then Ershad
and JP shall have to survive and pass the days at the mercy of the major party
in the alliance whether it is led by AL or by BNP. Because distribution of
seats between or among the partners in the alliance for the elections to
Parliament is all the time determined taking into consideration of the
partner’s overall standing locally and nationally first then comes the point of
consideration to international politics and pressures, if any. To achieve his
targets, may be, Ershad is going to commit another political blunder if he relies
on India for putting weights on Hasina or not unlikely on Khalda Zia, if the
circumstances take such turn making all analyses and mathematics null and void.
When a statesman is faced with the
crisis and legitimacy of ‘regime security’ then it is found in most of the
cases that he usually makes ‘state security subservient to regime security’.
Ershad was overburdened with the challenges of ‘Regime Security’ nationally and
internationally. To cope with the situation, on the matters of foreign policy
he had to model a ‘policy of compromise as and when required’, in other words
‘Dress to suit the purposes’ as a substitute for ‘give and take policy’ based
on Friendship toward all, malice to none. It is also true that he, following
the pursuits of his predecessor BNP, did not ignore to take benefits of the
maxim ‘Indo phobic Bangladesh
at the mass level and India
friendly Bangladesh
at the government level.’ His leaning towards China
and Pakistan at the
annoyance of India again
markedly made him questionable to India. In the field of foreign
policy and foreign relations, bi-lateral, regional and international, he used
to sigh a sigh of relief by applying his domestic approach of CMLA.In the end
he himself became confused about his so-called makeshift arrangements in the
domain of foreign policy. Looking at such state of hopscotch of foreign policy
of Bangladesh many critics
concluded that ‘Bangladesh
has no foreign policy and better call it foreign relations’
This necessarily does not mean that
Ershad had no major success in foreign policy. One must summon up his role in putting
SAARC into reality in 1984, his tactics and strategies for bringing foreign
aids, his dynamic enterprise to face the great devastation at Urichar with the
foreign supports and cooperation and, above all, his strong links with
contemporary leading heads of governments and states including those of Muslim
Ummah in particular. Had India
had any hand behind Ershad’s coming to power in 1982, yes, it was India in the
end that was responsible for his fall from the power, which Ershad himself told
the nation in a televised speech on 04 December 1990. He said (obviously
fingering at India)
‘a neighbor country wants to unseat me from power’. Mindset of the south bloc
in India
modeled after ‘India Doctrine’ is, to be sure, very rough, tough and complex.
It is understood by many that Hasina administration over the last four years
voluntarily or involuntarily has done so many things lavishly at the disregard
of the overall national interests of Bangladesh for which India has started
feeling very well and termed the period as a ‘role model’ of relations between
India and Bangladesh.
India’s approach to Bangladesh in
the context of time, space and dimension has been revisited and recast. Its old
policy to continue with AL
alone is currently replaced with ‘relations with all the political parties but
in a separate mode and fashion’. May be that is a kind of ‘strategic political engagement’
of Indian visionary diplomacy to gain more from Hasina in a negative
perspective without actually making a budge from her ‘historic love and
affection for AL’.
Whatever it might be, today neither BNP nor even Jamaat is at a distance from India (one may recall the official visit of the
delegation of Jamaat headed by then Publicity Secretary Qumaruzzan, now Joint
Secretary General, to India
at the invitation of the Congress in 1993). .Jatio Party is not the immediate preference
of India
as the third formidable and dependable force because of its weak political and
organizational standing at home. Moreover, Ershad needs at the outset two
things to settle with India.
One is to revisit his past mistakes, follies and failures while dealing with India and the other is renewal of the old ties
in the light of new geo-political landscapes in south Asia where India is at
present a declared sub-continental power. The matter is not so easy for Ershad,
and not easily digestible for India.
In all respects, ball is still
rotating around AL and BNP and Ershad himself is not unaware of it. From these
standpoints, even Ershad’s recurring visits to India
shall not make any sense of mutually rewarding breakthrough between India and JP. Hence,
to what extent Ershad’s visit to India at the latter’s invitation be effective
and fruits-bearing for Ershad, JP and Bangladesh, speaking honestly, primarily depends
on (a) Ershad’s credibility to India (b) the overall political strength of
Jatio Party and (c) the strength of Jatio Party rests on its policies, programs
and organizational strengths in the context of today’s political landscapes.
That’s why, so-called over-optimism and exaggeration about the said visit by
any quarter including Jatio Party are not in tune with reality at all at this
very moment.
Let Ershad and Jatio Party wait and
see how the relations between BNP and India develop in the coming days and how
long BNP remains stick to its music of ‘‘Indo phobic Bangladesh at the mass
level and India friendly Bangladesh at the government level, which is ,in fact,
on the decline noticeably since the day of Indian foreign minister’s call on
with Khaleda Zia on 8 July 2011 during the former visit to Bangladesh prior to
Premier Manmohan Singh’s official visit to Bangladesh on 06 September 2011
Furthermore, Manmohan-Khaleda talks at Dhaka on 06 September 2011 made the
matter softer and closer. Yes, Bangladesh
is also waiting to see when Khaleda Zia moves to India at the official invitation of
the Government of India.
It is a very usual manner to protest
a matter which does not fall into one’s choice/liking but sometimes it is wiser
not to react gamely. Truth remains truth under all the circumstances. Victory
goes to those who take lesson from truth and reality.
Therefore, Ershad has to believe and
bear in mind faithfully, honestly and sincerely that an individual is smaller
than a party and a party is smaller than a country. Consequently, in terms of
national interests, duties and responsibilities Ershad, despite his being the
central force of Jatio Party, is smaller than JP and JP is smaller than Bangladesh
(same is true in case of others as well). Time is moving faster for Ershad and
JP and ‘now’ is the most important time for them to speak for, stand by and serve
Bangladesh
meaningfully. No oscillation or hesitation, no swindling or dwindling, no
ambiguity or distraction may be desirable anymore under any state of affairs.
Instead of mere criticizing others including Sheikh Hasina and Khalda Zia, let
Ershad Ershad and Jatio Party wake up significantly and behold the people at
home, feel and understand their language and aspirations. We do not like to
lose any leader in any undemocratic manner and mode. May Allah bless Bangladesh, bless Ershad, bless Sheikh Hasina
and bless Begum Khaleda Zia and all others in the politics of Bangladesh so that their contributions from
respective standing take Bangladesh
to the position of honor, dignity and respect in the world at large.
(Dr. Sinha M. A. Sayeed, Chairman, Leadership Studies Foundation, LSF,
blog- www.sinhaerathblog.blogspot.com)
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