The decision by the Awami League leadership to boycott Bangladesh’s Jan. 22 general election is bad enough but the call for a two-day transport blockade next week is deplorable. The process of democracy, however flawed, will not be advanced by behavior on the streets that is almost certain to provoke further violence and loss of life. It ought to be a matter of the greatest concern if not profound shame to all politicians that since last October when a caretaker administration took over, 45 Bangladeshis have died in political street fighting and hundreds more injured.
Awami League leader Hasina Wajed may well be right that the voting system needs reform and that voting lists have been packed with phony names likely to support the Bangladesh Nationalist Party led by her bitter rival Begum Khaleda Zia. Similar accusations were made when the Awami League was in power. Unfortunately, neither of the political coalitions led by the BNP and the League has ever given much quarter to the other. This dangerous intolerance is based upon the visceral family enmity of the two party leaders.
Yet one of the few moments when they acted in concert was to create the system for a caretaker administration under the president, whose powers are normally limited, to run the country in between scheduled elections. The idea was to remove the risk that the party in power would rig the elections in its favor. Since 1991 this system has worked well in three elections. But Hasina now claims that President Iajuddin Ahmed is biased toward Khaleda and the BNP who surrendered power last October. She also asserts the Electoral Commission is partisan toward the BNP.
There is however a way to tackle this issue peaceably. International electoral observers from the Commonwealth and other world bodies should be deployed to every voting station. Multiple voting is easily spotted if indelible ink is used. The movement of ballot boxes and the individual counts can also be monitored closely. There will still perhaps be some fraud, as happens in every election, including the United States and the UK. But it will be so limited as to have a negligible impact on the final result. No Bangladeshi politician should resist the mounting of such a major monitoring exercise.
In the meantime, Khaleda and Hasina should be insisting that their followers refrain from violence and be taking firm action against hotheads who believe that street fighting in any way advances the cause of a stable and democratic Bangladesh.
They might also reflect that Bangladeshi professor Muhammad Yunus and his groundbreaking Grameen Bank with its legion of pitifully poor borrowers is the current holder of the Nobel Peace Prize. Yunus has done much to raise the profile and standing of Bangladesh with his visionary provision of economic opportunity to millions in one of the world’s most disadvantaged countries. How fine it would be if some of the Nobel Peace Laureate’s wisdom rubbed off on his nation’s squabbling politicians.
