Olive Branch II

“Ghor pora goru shidure megh dekhle bho pai”…as they say in a bengali proverb. Now that shee sees she herself will be interned…perhaps in the same house…Khaleda is saying these things. These two women failed to reach any sort of consensus during 17 years of democratic rule. Now on their own self-interest of not facing the law, on their own supreme interest of political survival…have found common voice. So far the exchanges are one sided though. There has been no response to these overtures from Awami league.

I know these two will give it a color of democracy vs. army rule struggle…but I for one believe this is a struggle between those who seek to perpetuate dynastical rule in BD run alternately by one of two dynasties and those who want the rule to be by a representaitve set of the broader elite. If I may make a historical analogy…I’ll compare this current SOE episode with England’s Oliver Cromwell ‘revolucion”. Although it eventually failed…it left behind magna carta and a way for broader base of societal stake holders to participate in the ruling/policy making process in England beyond the absolute rule of the king and his coutiers.

I believe equally interesting is the meeting between Zillur Rahman and Tofail-Razzak. I waiting on confirmed news on what came of that meeting.

http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/07/19/d7071901044.htm

Link for those who care to read the whole statement.

‘but I for one believe this is a struggle between those who seek to perpetuate dynastical rule in BD run alternately by one of two dynasties and those who want the rule to be by a representaitve set of the broader elite’

I must say that this is a tad oversimplistic. If someone wants free and fair elections in the quickest time possible it doesn’t mean that they support dynastic politics, even if it means that such an election could result in KZ/SH returning to power. And the road-map is hardly a reassuring document, eg, the allocated time for ‘consultations with the media’ is 3 times the length of time allocated for ‘consultations with politcal parties’. Similary, if someone opposes the actions of the CTG/Military on human-rights, legal and political grounds it doesn’t make them stooges of one of the major politcal parties. Arguments like ‘but they did the same etc’ are unhelpful because the reson d’etre of this administration, the reason why it received support at the start, was the attempt to remove the negative aspects of the political process that we’ve seen to date. If this administration continues to perpetuate the cycle of using state power in a coercive manner nothing will have changed. And exactly does a ‘representative set of the broader elite’ mean? Are you talking about an Iranian style of democracy? That is, once we’ve chosen whom you can chose, you can go and freely chose them?

It’s a tricky situation for the AL in regards to dealing with overtures from the BNP. Firstly, there are big issues like the attempted rigging of the Jan 07 elections, August 21st grenade attacks and the general political repression over the last 5 years (yes, yes, AL were no angels but lets deal with the here and now). It’s easy to say what would be a smart move tappping into my keyboard from the comfort of my home but surely the opinion of the AL rank and file must be taken into account. Also, does KZ even speak for the BNP anymore?

If you know that having election in the quickest possible time has a high probability of bringing back either woman….why would you want a quick election unless you want them back? Wasn’t the purpose of the state of emergency to clean up the mess created by this two? For seventeen years they ruled unfettered…army or anyone didn’t say a word in anger….as they shouldn’t. Then they created a situation where the constitution itself became meaningless. So why on earth would you want quick election if it’ll only bring them back…so that we can go back to the same politics of destruction, corruption and controlled chaos? If this doesn’t make you a strong supporter of these people then I dunno what does.

You can yap all you want about human rights, legal and political rights….but where was this criticism and what did it mean during the abuses of the last 30 years? Nothing new can be created without destroying the old structure. There will be mistakes and there will be over-reactions…because all actions are performed by humans not angels. No one said coming of this government will usher in an era of true Jeffersonian democracy overnight with zero corruption. It came during a national emergency…so “doctrine of necessity” will guide its actions. Our country is too poor and two uneducated to have a proper democracy in the true sense of the word. Having an election every 5 years…where you can manipulate the voler list, buy votes and intimidate voters in addition to selling nominations for millions ..does not make a democracy. Yes, I want Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore,Indonesia, Turkish style “managed democracy” or as I would call it a “republic”. Our constitution calls us a People’s REPUBLIC of Bangladesh…nowhere do we see democracy in it. Iranian system is also similar to these…but the religious bent/shia dogma makes it unpalatable for our polity. All these countries…I mentioned are middle income countries (singapore is fully developed) with almost non-existant poverty and per capita in the ~5000 dollar range. The so called largest democracy in the world does not have snowball in hells chance to reach that level in the next 50 years ( according to its own economists)…not because of any paucity of resources or talent but because of inefficiency of its system. To me democracy as a system with a certain formal structure is not a sacred cow…the desired outcomes of a representative society is. Those outcomes are necessarily long term that require disciplined multi-stage pursuit. There is no shortcut to become an America or a UK in 10 years. Don’t forget America was not even a republic for first 250 years of its existance as a nation ( I don’t mean the state itself…but its proto states in the colonial era). Rome was not built in a day as they say. It is childish over-simplification to think if we adopted the American/European constitution, Bill of Rights, all administrative structures just like it…our society will be transformed in a decade just like them. WHy? Because state structure is just one element of social and political progress…there are others. That is not to say one must not pursue perfection of institutional structures or they don’t matter…they do…but you must give it tis time to bear fruit.

Wonder no more Saif bhai!:) My individual reaction (which self-admittedly counts for little) when I read that statement was to curse and send out a large ball of spit flying over the rail of my 7th floor balcony in digust and frustration. No doubt some innocent passerby cursed me in turn, and thus the frustration was perpetuated.

More seriously, this woman should have been thought twice about her tasteless disrespect for Mujib’s death. To admit now that he was a “national leader”, after spiting her opponent by rubbing her family’s death in her face…. nothing good can be said about that.

From all accounts, RATS-Zillur meeting went pretty amicably. Looks like AL is not going to split right away.

Syed, what makes you so sure that I didn’t ‘yap’ about human, legal and political rights during the tenure of previous governments? This administration should be held against the same standards that we criticize the previous governments for failing to acheive. Again, my point is that being critical of the CTG doesn’t make you ‘one of them’. And you can give them the benefit of the doubt if you want but it’s not the first crack the army have had; the 80s were hardly a decade covered in glory.

Althouhg there’s nothing wrong in using other countries as models for comparison (although I’m not sure Indonesia is one to aspire to), you have to take into account the historical, geo-political, demographic factors surrounding political development in these countries. Just because authoritarian development has worked for Singapore doesn’t mean that it will work for Bangladesh.

And who are the ‘representaitve set of the broader elite’, the opportunists from both political parties happy to cosy up to the army-CTG?

Janab…

In the 80’s crack at it…they didn’t have a tehcnocratic council running the show…it was just some men in uniform and some opportunists. The change now is that the operational managers…the CTG advisors.

“Representative set of broader elites” meaning stakeholders from all sections of power for example:

Dr F : BB
Dr. IA Chow: Foreign policy bureaucracy
Barr Mainul: Media
ACC Chief: Army
DR AB Aziz Islam : Civilian bureaucracy.
Tapan Chow: Business Class
Gitiyara: NGO/Women’s rights movements
so on and so forth…..

Same way one may argue just because democratic development worked in XYZ country there is no guarantee it will work in BD. My point is in the last 50 years there is not a single country that went from poor to semi-developed that was not a “managed democracy”/republic. Says something doesn’t it…

Ok, let’s agree to disagree and not drag this on needlessly. I think democracy is still the way forward for Bangladesh and perhaps the ‘manage’ element would’ve been (still could) for this CTG to make some of the institutions more robust. They’ve had a stab at it with the ACC and EC but this has been accompanied with a healthy dose of political engineering (you can launch a new party as long as you call it a ‘tea party’ and say that you ‘plan to do good things’ but you can’t meet to discuss party reforms. Unless you’re a ‘we want a new leader reformist’) which makes me a little wary.

Bye!