Ground Realities :The big mistakes that men have always made

CHIEF Election Commissioner A.T.M. Shamsul Huda says he is sorry about the mess the Election Commission made by inviting the wrong faction of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to a dialogue. Apologies accepted. But what remains a question is why, despite all those reminders and entreaties about the need to do the right thing, the Election Commission (EC) ignored Khondokar Delwar Hossain and invited Major Hafiz to speak for the BNP.

The truth was that it was Delwar who wielded lawful authority, by virtue of the powers vested in the BNP chairperson under the party constitution. But the EC paid little or no heed to that. It was not until the judiciary decided that Hafiz and his faction did not qualify to speak for the BNP that the EC acknowledged its blunder. By then it was too late. By then too much water had flowed under the bridge. By then, things had got a lot too hard to handle.

That mistakes can cost a nation dear is a fact just proved by the EC. If the Delwar faction had not been so rudely pushed aside, if no one had spoken of a so-called doctrine of necessity, we would perhaps have not come to a pass where the grossly corrupt and the terribly malfeasant would now be preparing to walk out of prison and expect to be welcomed back as heroes by their followers.

Today, when an endless stream of individuals are hopping, skipping and jumping back to freedom through bail orders unthinkable even a couple of months ago, you begin to wonder if the entire purpose of the program set out by the caretaker government in January last year has not eventually been defeated. You ask yourself if drift has replaced a sense of purpose, if uncertainty about the future is not beginning to cloud the present.

It is a lesson that comes down to us all the way from history. Every time mistakes have been made, in this country as elsewhere, people have paid a high price. It was a blunder of the most terrible sort when, in the late 1970s, General Ziaur Rahman permitted a re-entry into politics of those elements that had opposed the liberation of Bangladesh and had even aided and abetted the occupation Pakistan army in its campaign of genocide.

The bad tremors caused by that act of regressive politics are yet being felt; and compounding our difficulties is the heart-breaking knowledge that at this point in time we do not have the morally strong leadership that could inspire us into a new secular future once again.

The annihilation of the Bengali nationalist leadership, beginning with the assassination of Bangabandhu and going all the way to the murder in prison of the four leaders of the Mujibnagar government, has proved to be a most effectual way of keeping Bangladesh on its knees, almost subservient to outside forces and to fate. You might raise your eyebrows at this talk of subservience.

You will not, when you remember what has of late been happening to our citizens abroad, especially in the Middle East. And we as a people, we in the form of the governments we have had and yet have, have not quite been able to recreate for ourselves the self-esteem and the confidence that so remarkably liberated us from our despondency in the days of Pakistan.

Go back to August 1975. Had the chiefs of the three services and other senior officers in the military moved speedily to take out the majors and colonels who had murdered the Father of the Nation and his family, Bangladesh would be spared the many indignities it has gone through at the hands of unscrupulous men and women in these thirty three years. Had General Osmany opted to take a firm position against the 1975 murderers, had he not joined Moshtaque's regime as defence adviser, life for you and me might well have been different.

Osmany had demonstrated great courage only months earlier when he defied Bangabandhu and voluntarily gave up his membership of the Jatiyo Sangsad rather than be part of the Baksal political arrangement. And yet, there he was in the company of unsavoury men who had murdered, and caused the fall of, constitutional government in the country!

Of course, it is in the nature of people to make mistakes. Why would a certain class of Bengalis, convinced that Bangladesh was a fallacy, go all the way to the United Nations in 1971 to plead the case for Pakistan? But look, then, at the consequences. They ended up losing a country they loved, in this case Pakistan. And they became pariahs among their own people, in this case Bengalis.

Yes, people do make mistakes. Back in March 1940, we can tell ourselves in hindsight, it was a mistake for the All-India Muslim League to demand the creation of Pakistan. The ramifications of that move are yet being felt and millions of people, especially Muslims, have suffered grievously. In August 1946, it was a huge blunder on Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy's part to declare a holiday in observance of Direct Action Day in Calcutta.

That myopic move pushed thousands of Hindus and Muslims to their deaths. It also marked the point where Hindus and Muslims finally lost political faith in one another. In 1950 and 1964, refugees crossed paths between India and Pakistan. In 21st century Gujarat, Narendra Modi has presided over a murder of Muslims. In Pakistan, religious minorities remain a persecuted lot. In Bangladesh, there is yet the Vested Property Act to remind us of the horrific legacy we are all heir to. And all because of mistakes made by men who should have known better.

In 1994, the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party cheerfully rigged the Magura by-election. That theft of the vote led to the peculiarity we have been dumped with, in the form and substance of an un-elected caretaker government. Surely there is something queer about such a government. Every five years, an elected administration quietly hands over power to a body of men not chosen for office by the electorate and, therefore, not accountable to the country.

You may pat yourself on the back at having devised this unique form of politics as a way of ensuring free, transparent general elections. But try being serious. If only the ruling circles in 1994 had chosen to be democratic and decent, if only they had not laid their grasping hands on the ballot boxes, we would not be in the kind of embarrassment we are in today.

It was a terrible mistake to have Justice M.A. Aziz in the office of chief election commissioner. And certainly it was a scandal having President Iajuddin Ahmed take charge of the caretaker government and, by that act, push the country down the precipice a little more.

In this country, we are trying to claw back to a modicum of respectability today. A.T.M. Shamsul Huda's apology helps, quite a bit, in our collective effort to have our self-esteem restored. That is good enough -- in a country where everyone sets out to create a fiefdom, then plunders and pillages and will not say sorry at all. It takes courage to say sorry. By that measure, Huda has demonstrated courage. We appreciate the gesture.