Editorial
Saying 'no' to 'grand
alliance' not enough SOME leaders of the left-leaning 11-party alliance insist that they will not enter into the 'grand alliance' cobbled together by the Awami League although they will continue to be part of the AL-led 14-party alliance, so says a report front-paged in the Bangla daily Prothom Alo. The left leaders attribute their stance to the inclusion of the Jatiya Party led by the 'deposed despot' HM Ershad and the religion-based Islami Oikya Jote in the alliance, saying sharing the same dais with the communal forces and an autocrat merely for vote-bank politics will be detrimental to both elections and politics. While the position taken by the left leaders against mere vote-bank politics and the 'grand alliance' is commendable, their decision to stay within the 14-party fold appears no less opportunistic. Let us explain why.
The people of this country fought the war of independence in 1971 with a view to securing for themselves a sovereign nation state built on secular-democratic principles; establishing therein representative democracy through sustained opposition to religion-based politics on the one hand and militarisation of politics on the other; and introducing an egalitarian economic order whereby they will be ensured equal access to public resources. Regrettably, the ruling elite or, in other words, its political parties have steadily veered away from the spirit of the war of independence into the clutches of illiberal politics and neoliberal economic policies, led worldwide by the United States and the international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank.
While the mainstream political parties such as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the Awami League, the Jatiya Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh somewhat gleefully acquiesced to policies prescribed by the US and the neoliberal international financial institutions, the left-leaning forces have been no less culpable for allowing the slow but sure abdication of the spirit of the war of independence by the ruling elite. They have failed to put up effective resistance to such a practice on the one hand and hobnobbed with the mainstream political parties at different times on the other.
The rationale the left-leaning parties put forth for choosing one major political camp over the other has been tenuous as well. Indeed, the BNP is no longer the centrist party it professes to be and is surrounded by Islamist and anti-democratic forces. However, the Awami League has also not hesitated to either sign a memorandum of understanding with the Khelafat-e-Majlish, a political party which makes no attempt to veil its aspiration to see Bangladesh transformed into a theocratic state, recently or recognise Jamaat as a democratic force back in the 1990s and take it on board in their movement against the BNP government. It has also welcomed into the 'grand alliance' Ershad, a deposed military dictator who drove the last nail into the coffin of the people's secular-democratic aspiration by making Islam the state religion.
Hence, the decision by the left leaders to stay in the 14-party alliance but not join the 'grand alliance' may be high on feel-good factors but essentially smacks of the kind of political opportunism that they castigate the mainstream political parties for. If they really want the national politics restored on the secular-democratic ideals, they should dissociate themselves from the opportunistic political parties right-away and rally the secular-democratic forces in society. It might not take them to the corridors of power immediately, but will surely give rise to an alternative and progressive political stream that they themselves envisaged when they formed the 11-party alliance a few years ago. Society needs such a political stream to keep the aspiration for a return to the ideals of the war of independence alive.
http://www.newagebd.com/2008/oct/07/edit.html
অদক্ষতা, অযোগ্যতা আর তাবেদারীর মাধ্যমে দেশের হাজার হাজার কোটি টাকা ক্ষতি করার জন্য ওদের আর হেলপারদের বিরুদ্ধে মামলা ,আর ওরা গ্রেফতার হবে কবে? |
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