DENIGRATION and demonisation of politicians seem to have become a favourite pastime of civil-society stalwarts these days, especially since the proclamation of a state of emergency on January 11 and the subsequent installation of a military-backed interim government. Every time a leader of one political party or the other has been detained by the army-led joint forces for suspected involvement in crime and corruption, such politician-bashing has intensified. As it seems now, especially if one has to accept what the civil-society stalwarts have been saying, the politicians are the primary reason for whatever ills that have befallen the country. The imposition of a state of emergency and concomitant suspension of fundamental rights of the citizens came about because the politicians, in the obsessive and crude pursuit of state power and lucre, had pushed the country to the brink of utter lawlessness. Such key institutions of the state as the Election Commission, the Anti-Corruption Commission and the Public Service Commission became dysfunctional, corrupt and politicised because the politicians had never allowed them to function independently. The economy was in tatters because of plundering by the politicians and their families. The list of misdeeds for which they are blamed goes on and on. Professor Muhammad Yunus has been at the forefront of such politician-bashing. The Nobel Laureate, who formally announced his entrance into politics on February 22, took the negative campaign against the politicians a step further, when, in an interview with the international news agency Agence France-Presse on January 17, he said the politicians in Bangladesh are only in politics for money. ‘It’s about power, power to make money. There is no ideological thing, simply who gets the bigger booty,’ he said. Both the major political parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, reacted sharply to such ‘sweeping and hostile remarks’. However, Yunus’s remarks went down well with the civil-society stalwarts and added impetus to their politician-bashing campaign.
   In such circumstances, it was only inevitable that the chief of either the Awami League or the BNP would some day come up with a scathing response to the ongoing campaign of denigrating and demonising the politicians. Come it did on February 21 in a signed article by the AL president and former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, in a Bangla daily. The fairly long article was, predictably, an apology for the brand of politics she and her party have supposedly pursued all through. The underlying tone of the write-up seems to be that it is okay to denigrate and demonise the politicians as long as they are not Awami Leaguers. Be that as it may, Hasina has nonetheless raised a few valid points, albeit tainted with a partisan tinge. Her implication that blanket demonisation and denigration of politicians is detrimental to the political process and, by extension, to the interest of the country is indeed justified. There should be no doubt whatsoever in anyone’s mind that there is no alternative to a political process, which is the lifeblood of a modern state. While there is little doubt that the crude struggle for state power by the politicians has vitiated the political process in Bangladesh, it is foolhardy to turn to apolitical quarters for redress. Disruption, let alone elimination, of the political process does not hold the solution to the crisis the country is now facing.
   Having said that, it cannot be denied that the indiscriminate condemnation of political parties and politicians we are seeing today is far from surprising. Hasina said she would have been happy if, instead of blanket demonisation, efforts had been made to differentiate between one political leader and the other, one political party and the other, on the basis of their origin, performance, so on and so forth. Wouldn’t we all? Unfortunately, as it stands now, there is no discernible difference between the political parties, especially between the Awami League and the BNP. Both have had their share of state power over the past 15 years or so, and it will not be over-generalisation by any means to say both have acted identically. Both have been slave to the market economy and have unashamedly toed the line of the multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund when it came to economic policy. They have allowed certain countries free rein to interfere with, if not intervene in, internal affairs of the state while talking tall about sovereignty, national security, so on and so forth. They have consistently tried to outdo each other when it came to corruption, nepotism and plundering of the public exchequer. While bigwigs of the BNP and their beneficiaries have largely borne the brunt of the anti-crime and anti-corruption crackdown initiated by the interim government, it could very well have been the Awami Leaguers and their aides had a similar operation been launched immediately after the five-year tenure of the AL government between 1996 and 2001. Both camps deserted ideology-based politics long ago and their political activism, organised and orchestrated to establish or perpetuate control of state power, is similar if not identical. When the parties are so similar in content and intent, blanket denigration and demonisation of the politicians is hardly surprising. Hasina is also right when she says the interim government’s anti-crime and anti-corruption crackdown has been selective. We agree when the government says that the country in general and the political and electoral process in particular must be purged of crime and corruption. However, we cannot disagree more when it refuses to go after the corrupt and criminal elements in certain sectors on the grounds that it might bring these sectors to a grinding halt. To be effective, any anti-crime and anti-corruption operation has to be comprehensive, no matter how painful it generally is in the short term. Corruption breeds corruption and crime begets crime. If not dealt with comprehensively, the seed will be there to sprout afresh at an opportune time. That is why the fight against crime and corruption has to be sustained and institutionalised. And institutionalisation will not be possible through such ad hoc arrangement as interim governance. It has to be in-built within the political process itself. Therefore, the sooner the interim government hands over power to an elected government after fair and credible elections, the better it is. Of course, there are certain issues that the interim government has to redress in the meantime. However, it does not in any way mean that the interim government has to be in power for an indefinite period to get the job done. Instead of getting one thing done and starting another, the interim government should undertake the necessary actions simultaneously and wrap them up within a specified timeframe. Meanwhile, the political parties have their own yards to clean. Neither of the two major parties practises intra-party democracy, nor do they have any institutionalised mechanism to remove criminal and corrupt elements from their folds. As the BNP’s secretary-general said a couple of days ago, it is time for self-realisation and self-cleansing. The quality of politics depends on the quality of the political parties. Both the Awami League and the BNP have failed over the years to get their act together and set a standard for others to follow. While they have talked of democratic order, they have been internally autocratic, which has found expression in the way they have run the country at different times. The disruption in the democratic order that we have had did come about largely due to their failure to uphold and enrich the political process. They must learn from the past and prepare themselves for the future. If they do not, history may repeat itself.