Prime Minister Khaleda Zia appears to have actively embraced the notion that there is no last word in politics (again, a cliche, but a pointed and sinister one anyway), and because she has, she finds it hugely convenient to go to General Hussein Muhammad Ershad and solicit his support in the next general election.

Consider going back in time. On a day in 1983, when Ershad was president, Kazi Zafar Ahmed, then in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, escorted Begum Zia to a meeting with the man who had overthrown the BNP administration of Justice Abdus Sattar a year earlier. The new chairperson of the BNP, still wedded to the belief that Ershad had had a hand in the assassination of her husband, refused to take a seat, told Ershad off and walked out. And for the next seven years, as head of the seven-party political combine, she led a spirited movement, along with the fifteen-party alliance of Sheikh Hasina, aimed at the removal of the Ershad illegitimacy from office.

The rest of the story remains a testament to the long struggle the people of Bangladesh waged against what has traditionally been referred to as the Ershad autocracy. Begum Zia, in her first stint as prime minister, made sure that Ershad went to jail (despite his electoral triumph in his native district) on corruption charges and stayed there. It would not be until 1996 that the fallen dictator would find his place, and his feet, again when, with the Awami League in power, he entered the Jatiyo Sangsad, of course, on bail.

To cut a long story short, Begum Zia and General Ershad have never trusted each other. The degree of mistrust and suspicion that has generally defined relations between the two has all too often been the stuff of the politics of impoverishment. The prime minister's administration has sometimes made sure that Ershad could not travel abroad. And if you speak to the cynics -- and they are all over town -- you might chance to hear the meaningful whisper that it was people in the four-party alliance government who played a behind-the-scenes role in the very public spat the former president engaged in with his young, and now divorced, second wife Bidisha. Since that parting of the ways between the crusty old dictator and the definitely ambitious young woman, Ershad's life has been made slightly easier. Or, if you care to go a little deeper into the question, you might say that for the first time in the past five years he breathes a little easier.

And those corruption cases? Well, the general does not appear to be worried. That is because, today, it is not so much a matter of his corruption as it is of Khaleda Zia's need for his support at the forthcoming elections. The general has demanded (can you believe it?) as many as sixty seats in Parliament for his dwindling Jatiyo Party, either the presidency of the republic, or the speaker's chair in the Jatiyo Sangsad, for himself, and a dropping of all cases against him.

That last bit, the cases aspect, is intriguing -- or so you think. But if you have been following the story of the alliance government since October 2001 you will realise, with something of a moral jolt, that withdrawing cases relating to either corruption, or downright murder, has been a pretty easy thing for this government to handle. When Altaf Hossain Chowdhury took charge as home minister in 2001, quite a good number of corruption cases were pending against him. Slowly, and eventually, they were withdrawn.

That was the beginning and by now we, as a people, have reached a stage where other ministers, ministers of state, parliamentarians, and even some of their progeny, have had legal proceedings against them wrapped up and thrown out the window. That was because someone, or an organised group in the higher echelons of government, peddled the notion that the cases filed against these individuals by the Awami League government had been politically motivated. And so there was good reason, as some might argue, for the successor government to take its own political step of having the cases quashed. A fine instance of governance, or an absence of it, you have here. All this talk of rule of law, of accountability, of the separation of the judiciary from the executive sinks to nothingness when you recall all these tales of grotesque behaviour on the part of those from whom you had expected better.

That being the reality on the ground, it really should not be a surprise that the BNP, today, attempts the art of seduction on its old enemy. Even enemies have a convergence of interests. Back in the early 1970s, a newly-formed BNP went all out in its efforts to promote a political order that ran counter to the principles of the War of Liberation. In the 1980s, the Jatiyo Party managed to uphold the same program, to the dismay of those who recalled the ethos of the armed struggle for freedom. Ziaur Rahman's nineteen points, and H M Ershad's eighteen points, when you consider the substance in them, effectively caused a slide in democracy and a battering of the secular order.

The militarisation of politics, which the BNP and the JP so assiduously stamped on the country, has left huge, almost indelible, scars on the nation's body politic. As for political somersaults, those have been refined into near art form per courtesy of these two political organisations. Both parties have preached a mishmash called "Bangladeshi nationalism;" both have cleverly espoused the cause of religious politics to the detriment of democracy.

Such being a given, there is little wonder that General Ershad and Begum Zia, with all their adherents, should now be exploring the ways and means of arriving at some new arithmetic. It is, lest you be mistaken, really old arithmetic based on new formulae. That the BNP and JP were really inseparable twins (both are products of military rule) should never have been in doubt. The apparent hostility that has marked ties between the general and the prime minister should, in such light, be viewed as a mere clash of egos, and no more than that.

Now that the next round of voting threatens to send the present set of rulers packing (that is how people are beginning to see things), men and women of identically regressive thought need to come together if they mean to steer clear of the precipice. That is what the BNP, JP and, of course the Jamaat, mean to do.

Such a turn in politics should be a wake-up call to the forces of secular democracy. With vested interests now aligning themselves over the need to reassure themselves about an uninterrupted supply of loaves and fishes, it becomes an absolute necessity for the Awami League, and its allies, to get their act together.

The movement for reform of the caretaker system, the struggle for the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner and the entire set-up at the Election Commission, the longer-term movement for a restoration of secular democratic order, will need to be intensified now that the rightist and fundamentalist camps mean to regroup and hold on to power. The general strikes have done their work. The road marches, or padayatras, have convincingly demonstrated a popular desire for change.

It should now be for Sheikh Hasina, and her friends, to redefine their politics, restructure their social strategies and hold out assurances to the country that they are indeed capable of providing honest, purposeful and enlightened government. But for that kind of government to take charge of our lives, the secular forces must first win the elections.

That basically means beating back such demons as election engineering, and ensuring that invisible elements do not arise in the dark to upset, once more, the caravan of decency set rolling in June 1996. The teaming up of the corrupt, and the incompetent, requires neutralising. And politics calls for a thorough cleansing.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Executive Editor, Dhaka Courier.