To 'kill' a political party!

There is much talk in town about one of the largest political parties in the country 'dying' out. And in fact some senior members of the BNP, some of the very few that have managed to keep themselves out of jail, have accused the AL of conspiring to 'kill' the BNP. But can a political party, which claims grassroots support base, be really 'killed' until it suffers death itself, having gone through the decaying process infused by its own folly before finally succumbing? 

However, it is not beyond the pale of political gamesmanship to neuter a political opponent. This is a common practice in our part of the world where politics has become a mix of pastime and business; breaking up a political party, if not 'killing' it, is a handy method employed through coercion, cajoling and enticement. The first expedient, in the case of Bangladesh in the present context, appears to have been most effective. 

The military rulers in Bangladesh with democratic pretensions formed political parties that were initially nothing more than agglomeration of people from the many parties in the country. Surprisingly, in their schemes were complicit many leaders with credible political credentials. But the exodus of the turncoats from the major parties could not weaken the bigger parties in any significant way, notwithstanding the underlying aim of the exercise. This time around it is neither money nor lure that has compelled some 'wise' and some 'otherwise' political cadres changing camp but the fear and threat of litigation which the government has used very craftily to chastise the BNP.  

The AL appears to have no qualms in admitting into their ranks many from the BNP with criminal cases instituted against them recently. As a wise man had said, "Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party". In this case it seems that the AL is changing its principles for the sake of others from outside the party. Even some of the much maligned Jamaat cadres have found a safe haven in the AL. 

It is surprising to hear the ominous portends from the mouth of the BNP politicians which seems to suggest that the party is not clear where it is at the moment and where it is heading. One wonders whether the thinking-ones among the BNP elites have come to realise that they have quite lost their way and they must identify the loadstar and reset their compass accordingly for a course correction. 

In talking about 'demise' of a party, it is a fact that while it has taken the collective effort of many to bring up the BNP as a party, whatever may have been the circumstances of its birth, it has taken the gross folly of the party chairperson aided equally by the unmitigated infantile and imprudent policy of the senior vice-chairperson to bring the party to the moribund state that it is now in. 

A political party cannot be merely reactive to political events and even much less suffer from duality of command exacerbated by string pulling by the absentee landlord. The party indeed has become a personal fiefdom where the voices of the many are drowned by the voice of the two. Thus no amount of regrouping or reordering of the leadership structure can infuse life in the party until saner counsel is given due importance and the dictates of the brain is given preference to the heart's. 

The injudicious BNP strategy to bring down the AL government through violence has provided a golden opportunity to the AL to make it a political non-entity through litigations under the law of the land. Filing of cases against the grassroots as well as top ranking leaders of the BNP on charges of killing and arson has divested the party of leadership at all levels. The aftermath is there to see. 

It is therefore not the time for the BNP or Khaleda Zia to put conditions for election. The party must use the four years between now and the next election to set its house in order and prepare to put up a credible show in 2019 without fearing of losing it. It must contest in election unless it wants the country to suffer another five years of a pseudo-democratic dispensation, with the inevitable mutation to a monist structure. It can serve the nation, if it wants to, by playing its role as an effective opposition, something that neither of the two parties has played when it was in the opposition. That would be much better for the people than the existing situation which can best be described as being neither here nor there.  

The prospect of a political arrangement without a credible opposition may appear tantalising to the AL, but its ominous effect on democracy in Bangladesh should not be lost upon the country's polity.  

The writer is Editor, Oped and Defence & Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.