For Bangladeshis the new year of 2009 starts with a bang.
We have had our elections and we have voted our candidates
to parliament. Almost the entire nation has voted for
change and for AL providing it with an electoral victory
unprecedented in its scope and extent. If there is any
explanation, it is that people want changes, perhaps even
decisive, revolutionary changes for the better and that
the AL has somehow tapped into this urge for change.
Whatever it is, the AL has been decisively voted for, now
it has the parliament, will within a day or two form the
government and for the next 5 years it has the job of
reflecting the "will of the people".
The nature, the direction and tone of that parliament
and government has been already set by the Premier-to-be
Sheikh Hasina in her press conference on 31 December 2007
where she spelled out the broad and general principles on
how the AL intends to conduct parliament and governance
for the next 5 years.
The issues are all contained in the AL election manifesto
and have been well publicized during the election campaign
and therefore, need not be gone into here but what needs
to be understood is the tenor, the trend of how AL and
Sheikh Hasina view Bangladesh as it is today and as they
desire to see it after 5 years of their government. In
the words of Sheikh Hasina, "This win is for good
governance against misrule, peace in opposition to
terrorism and secular democracy as opposed to communalism.
It would be a real victory for us when we would be able to
establish a modern, scientific and developed Bangladesh.
Countrymen would live a better life as the citizens of a
peaceful nation in the South Asia region. The landslide
victory would get a real shape when rules of law, human
rights and good governance will be ensured and spirit of
hard earned independence will be materialized" - that
in a nut-shell is the guiding principles of the soon-to-be
AL government.
If the AL can effectively mobilize national resources
to achieve the goals set out by Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh
would indeed have changed, for the better, beyond
recognition, after 5 years. If, on the other hand, these
goals cannot be achieved at all because of AL's detraction
from its guiding principles or because of a lack of will,
foresight and acumen, Bangladesh would be far worse off
than it ever was.
What the AL has to keep constantly in mind is that the
answer to the manifold problems of Bangladesh lies in
restructuring and not merely modifying every institution
of both the government and the State in such a way that
they reflect the stated minimum of social, political and
economic equity and justice for its entire people. The
AL certainly understands, if not right away then soon
enough, that it is stepping into entirely new territory,
metaphorically speaking and that "new territory" will
invariably include working out and implementing an
entirely new concept of government and governance -
the AL has been provided the authority and the mandate to
do so by the electorate in such a massive way as to
preclude any arguments, doubts or debates about it.
Therefore, existing and prevailing metaphors such as
power, rule, govern must be replaced by service,
cooperate, support & create.
What the AL also needs to keep in mind is that it is
not our politics which divide us but our economics. We
have too many people with far too few resources; we have
too many poor and too few rich and we have these few rich
taking away too much of the resources from the too many
people. Our politicians and political parties have, so
far, simply used the facts and myths of history to
monopolize the use and distribution of resources. This has
got to change.
As citizens it is our bounden responsibility to see to
it that the AL is helped along its way to achieving its
goals because it is a government we have elected and
because it is our government - if it fails, we fail. We
need to support it and nurture it and we can only do that
if we, all together, respect whatever laws we have, keep
our individual desires, needs, avarices and ambitions
within bounds and work hard - without all these, no one,
not the AL not the BNP, not the 300 MPs can make
Bangladesh a prosperous Nation.
But the AL, for its part, has also got to understand that
our support is qualified by its adherence to its
manifesto and its publicly announced guiding principles
because it is on this that we have elected them to
government. If they detract, supports will diminish; if
they detract further, support will vanish and if they
throw them overboard, there will be resistance, conflict
and overthrow.
We know that behind the opaque cloud of our ignorance
and the uncertainties, the historical forces that shaped
our Country, are continuing to operate. We do not know
where we are going but we do know how our history has
brought us to this point. However, one thing is plain - if
we are to have a future, it cannot be by prolonging the
past or the present. Changes have to be brought about
voluntarily or changes will come about through violent
social and political conflicts - that is the lesson of our
history. The AL has been provided the mandate to bring
about those changes voluntarily so as to preclude changes
through violent social and political conflicts. We dare
not look at the consequences of AL's failure to fulfill
its commitments to "change".