Civil Society Initiative for Accountable Development
Let's not put the cart before the horse
Capt Husain Imam
The civil society's initiative supported by CPD, the Daily Star and Prothom Alo for an accountable development process in the context of the upcoming national election is most welcome. Having said that I must also say that the way they want to achieve this goal, specially the way Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the architect of 'Clean Candidate Andolon' wants it, seems to me rather unrealistic. I personally believe that politics is not a cup of tea for the civil society. By saying so I do not mean the civil society have no say in the political matters of the country. They do have, but in a different perspective and certainly not by fielding a candidate of their own independently. As we understand, the civil society's role is to raise voice against oppression, tyranny and injustice in the society, work as a pressure group to guard against wrong doings of the politicians and at the same time help them in carrying out development work of the country by giving their honest and constructive opinion and suggestion from their respective positions. They must not get themselves mixed up with politics, lest they lose their identity. Let the politicians do that job. I also believe that politics is an art more complex than any other art, science or technology. For a person to be an elected member of parliament and for that matter a politician, he should be first a politician, second a politician and then a businessman, a professional or an academician. Mere honesty and integrity is not enough for a true politician. He has to have a political vision, an ideology and patriotism and he must know the art of politics. More importantly, there has to be congenial political atmosphere and proper electoral process for a clean candidate to come out successful. Let us for arguments sake say that we have found a clean candidate with all the qualities of a good politician and have decided to field him as an independent candidate to contest against some unclean candidates of the mainstream political parties. Given the present political scenario and the electoral process where money, muscle and vicious intrigue rule the roost, can he come out successful? The answer is a big NO. Let me cite one or two examples. No body will deny that the veteran Awami League leader Matia Choudhury's honesty, integrity and her commitment to the people are legendary. Her performance as Agriculture Minister during the last Awami League rule was outstanding, to say the least. Yet she could not win in the last general election. Can any body question Dr. Kamal Hossain's honesty, integrity, sagacity and his contribution to the society? Yet, if I am not mistaken, he had lost his earnest money (Jamanat) in one of the national electio0ns, the reasons in both cases being, the entire election process was corrupt and faulty. So, let us not put the cart before the horse. Before we look for clean candidates, let us put all our effort in helping the political parties, who are now in the process of engaging themselves in a dialogue for reform of the entire electoral process including the Caretaker Government, to reach a fruitful conclusion so that we can have a free, fair and credible election in the first instance.
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