Editorial
An unpleasant déjà vu
We have been arguing for quite a few years now that for the political process to be competitive and the political culture to be healthy, and also for the sound growth of pluralism in society, the country needs to break away from the duopoly of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League. We also believe that there is the scope and space for the emergence of a party based on secular-democratic and progressive-nationalist values and ideologies. A long series of serious and visible political and intellectual exercise done within the normal process of politics by a group of democratically-oriented well-meaning people with no credibility crisis could help emerge such a party. Understandably, the third force in our political order that we envisage, and earnestly hope for, is not the one that certain quarters are reported to have been pushing for in recent times.
In the very first place, the move by the ‘behind-the-scenes initiators’ of a ‘new political order’ to form a new political platform will reinforce the public speculation, if not apprehension, that the military mentors of the interim government of Fakhruddin Ahmed are imposing a political party to serve their own political purposes. It seems that the planned political platform, if it comes to existence at all, will not be unprecedented, neither in content — i.e. a conglomeration of politicians from both sides of the current partisan divide — nor in intent — i.e. ratification of the deeds and misdeeds of the emergency government and perpetuation of control on state power as long as possible. It will be similar, if not identical, particularly to the one floated by the former military dictator HM Ershad in the 1980s.
The proponents of the ‘new political order’ are reported to have started ‘selecting comparatively young and popular leaders with better track records’ for the task of organising the new party at the district level. Quite predictably, they have resorted to intimidation and enticement tactics to rope in leaders of different front organisations of the two major political parties. Then, there are some politicians in both the political camps who are seemingly willing to join the new political platform out of opportunistic impulses. Then again, there is a group of politicians, who actively participated in different post-independence political movements such as the anti-autocracy movement in 1983-90, but have felt neglected by their respective parties for not being awarded key posts in the party or the government. On the whole, in all likelihood, the new party, if it comes to being after all, will be populated by some BNP and AL politicians who will have changed their allegiance either under duress or out of opportunism and disgruntlement. The common thread that will hold them together is self-aggrandisement and aspiration for state power.
One can hardly expect any positive impact on the political process from such a motley crowd of politicians. What’s even worse, the new party will only perpetuate the trend of power-hungry politics that the interim government and its military mentors have severally and so enthusiastically claimed they want to ostracise. So, the difficult job to give birth to a new political order, which will be genuinely committed to a democratic polity with a comprehensive national agenda of egalitarian economic development and social justice, remains to be initiated.
Schools that are off-limit
to women teachers
The fact that two leading government secondary schools in two biggest cities of the country have never employed a single female teacher during the decades since their inception is an unsettling piece of news. Newspaper reports mention that the Government Laboratory School in Dhaka and the Government Muslim High School in Chittagong have been continuing permanently with all-male teachers ignoring the rules and practices followed in all other schools of the country, as well as the relevant government directive. The Chittagong Muslim High School is nearly one hundred years old and the Government Laboratory School in Dhaka is also nearly half a century old. This is how the nation’s commitment to gender parity and women’s empowerment and creation of a liberal and pluralistic society is being honoured in the most eminent schools of the biggest cities!
This unpardonable omission is being defended, rather audaciously, on the basis of ‘convention’. This is the plea of the director general of the secondary and higher education directorate. But the director general admits that there is no government order not to post any female teacher to the Laboratory or Muslim School. A convention or unwritten rule cannot be a defence when it goes against the fundamental objectives of progress. We are living in the 21stt century. If educational institutions follow a recruitment and posting policy that make them off-limit to women, it is a severe blow to progress. There is a government directive to recruit 30 per cent women teachers in government schools and colleges. Of course, the directive women’s quota does not compel posting of women in every school but in the natural course of things every school is expected to have some women on its teaching panel. By their own admission, these two schools have deliberately barred women in conformity to a hoary and indefensible convention.
Maybe the convention was set by some misogynist teachers or administrators in the past. Convention and tradition are to be respected as long as they do not interfere with progress. But this convention, if it is one, is a retrograde practice and an act of injustice and completely out of tune with the educational and developmental perspectives of today. It can create imbalance in the entire secondary education sector. This kind of discrimination which is tantamount to enforcing a gender-based apartheid against women teachers, and the resulting imbalance, are to be corrected immediately.
SUNDAY COLUMN
The French election
Hasnat Abdul Hye
If in the ensuing elections to the national assembly the Socialists and the Centrists (Beyrou’s UDF) win the majority seats, the prime minister will be from either one of these parties and Sarkozy will have to settle for ‘cohabitation’. That prospect may become a reality forcing Sarkozy to be more sober and perhaps sombre. By all accounts, his stay in Elysee palace is hardly going to be smooth and restful if his ideas do not change
The recently concluded election to the French presidency has been remarkable on more counts than one. To begin with, it saw the turnout of a record number of voters, both in the first round and the runoff. In the first round 85 per cent of 44.5 million French voters turned up to cast their votes. In the run-off the figure was 84.8 per cent, almost the same number as in the first round. The turnout is remarkable because over the years the French voters had become mired in apathy and become increasingly indifferent to politics. According to a survey, for the last 20 years the number of French who registered to vote had been declining and the number of registered voters who stayed home had been increasing. Among those who voted, the number of people who voted for the candidates of the extreme right and the extreme left was on the increase. These gloomy trends changed in the two rounds of the presidential election this year. The record-breaking turnout indicates a renewed awareness among the voters about their responsibilities and role in deciding who runs the country, both in the government and in the opposition. Behind the new awakening were the social and economic issues that preoccupied the minds of voters as never before. The nature of the issues was such that the voters had to take a stand to ensure their resolution in a manner that suits their preferences. The concentration on issues led them to choice of parties that seemed capable of squaring with the preferences. Personalities mattered, but it was the manifesto of the parties they represented that had the decisive influence on voters. If personalities alone were crucial then the Socialist candidate, Segolene Royal, would have swept the polls winning over her abrasive rival Nicolas Sarkozy. She was more winsome and elegant than her rival. But the French voters voted both with their heads and minds.
The second remarkable outcome of the presidential election was the rejection by voters of extremists, both in the right and the left. Support for the party of the extreme right, Jean-Maric Le Pen’s Nationalist Front, fell from 18 per cent in 2002 to 10 per cent in the election this year. Whereas Le Pen qualified to contest in the run-off in 2002, he and his racist party was completely sidelined this time around. On the extreme left, the Communist Party, which for more than 30 years received around 20 per cent of total vote, got only 2 per cent this year. The French voters showed their disenchantment both with the extreme left and right and relegated them to the political wilderness. In this sense it has been a coming of age of the French voters who saw the futility and risk represented by the two extremes.
An unforeseen development and a surprise has been the rise of the centrist party which may be crucial in the election to the national assembly next June and for future presidential elections, if the trend continues. In fact, had the Socialist Party abandoned its policy of going alone and entered into an agreement for coalition with the centrist, there would have been a first woman as president of France. But the Socialist Party refused to have a deal with Francoise Bayrou, the presidential candidate of the Union for French Democracy. The UFD, founded in 1976 at the initiative of Valery Giscard d’Estang (president from 1974 to 1981) is an alliance of the centre and the non-Gaulist right, including the Republican Party and the Social Democrat Centre Party. Its position is centre-right and is inspired by Christian democrats. The emergence of this party is seen as a critical development in French politics. Bayrou garnered 17 per cent of the total vote, tripling the percentage that he had got in 2002. Although this was not enough to rank him as a candidate in the second round, the percentage of voters that it had as supporters could make a difference in the runoff had there been a coalition between the Socialists and the right-centrists UFD. Historically, the Socialists eschewed any kind of alliance for a coalition government, particularly with a rightist party. Royal very much wanted to have this alliance for a change but her party stuck stubbornly to the tradition and as a result the party suffered the third consecutive defeat in the presidential election. But according to Michael Rochard, a former French prime minister, the most important cause for the failure of the Socialists to win the election was not the absence of a coalition but the lack of a clear strategy on their part to offer choices to voters similar to social democracy elsewhere in Europe. The European socialists morphed long ago into social democrats and captured power on the basis their new agenda and label. The social democrats in quite a few European countries formed coalition governments with centrist parties and increased their popularity by keeping abreast with time, particularly in respect of accepting liberal economic thoughts that give greater role to free market, private initiative and enterprise. It was expected that after two previous defeats, the Socialists would try to become a party of government by undertaking reforms that allowed it to modify the statist ideology and embrace market forces as complementary to the role of the state. But instead of presenting a modern and relevant face to the public, the party was stuck with an agenda that was a throwback to the past and had little appeal to the voters at the crucial middle of the spectrum. To the undecided voters, the Socialist Party had no credibility. As a result, it was brushed aside by the majority in favour of a right-centre, the Union for a Popular Movement whose candidate, Sarkozy, was elected as president with 53 per cent vote. The UMP is relatively a new political outfit, having been created in 2002 from a merger of the RPR (Republican Alliance, founded by Jacques Chirac in 1976), part of the UFD together with Liberal Democracy, the Radical Party and the Independent and Small Farmers Union. Since 2002 the prime minister has come from the UMP, the majority party in the national assembly.
Sarkozy is an ultra-liberal and is a pro-marketeer. But his strongest credential is as a hard-liner on law and order and immigration. Alongside his programme for market reforms, tax cut and roll back of the welfare system, he is committed to curb on immigration and come down hard on those elements in society whom he openly described as ‘rabble’. His attitude on immigration and law and order hardened and crystallised after the riot in the suburbs of Paris in 2005 and 2006. In that riot it was the disgruntled and unemployed immigrants who participated, arousing the ire of Sarkozy, then in charge of the interior ministry. More about this, later.
Looking at Sarkozy’s agenda for reforms it is seen that some of the reform measures are contradictory. For instance, he wants to reduce national debt (64 per cent of the GDP), which is possible if there is more revenue earned through taxes or cut in public expenditure. The latter will be difficult to achieve, given the unwillingness of the public to part with the services and benefits being provided by the government at present. An increase in tax will fly in the face of his electoral promise to cut taxes. Given the reality, his fiscal policy will be a non-starter. On the other hand, exemption of overtime income beyond the 35 hour work-week from tax will further reduce government revenue and pamper those who are employed. This will hardly make Sarkozy popular with the 9 per cent of the labour force, comprising mostly youth, who are unemployed and angry with the good life enjoyed by the employed elders. His plan to create more jobs through flexible hiring and firing will also meet with the same resistance as it did when the CPE (Firsts Employment Contract) was introduced in 2006 allowing employers to retrench a new employee within the first two years without compensation. Faced with stiff resistance and street riot by the young, the government had to withdraw the CPE. Attempt to reintroduce the CPE, even with sweeteners (compensation), is not going to succeed now. This will hardly be an effective and popular way to reduce unemployment. It will stand in good stead for Sarkozy to remember that economic reforms come with a price tag in terms of unemployment, reduced income and social dislocations. The French as a nation are very volatile and emotionally explosive when it comes to rights and equal opportunities. Royal warned the voters again and again that Sarkozy stood for inequality and privilege for the rich. If Sarkozy plunges headlong into his reform programmes he is likely to come up against many demonstrations like those seen in 2006 when the CPE was introduced. Sarkozy should know that the French are quick to put up the barricades when it comes to fight for their rights and to protect their interests.
On the social front, Sarkozy faces a divided France, divided along ethnic and religious lines. The race riots in the autumn of 2005 and the spring of 2006 should remind him of the danger of trying to implement a heavy-handed policy on immigration and law and order. While putting the lid on illegal immigration in future may find some support among the immigrant community, treating them as ‘rabble’ or criminals will only heighten the tension. The absence of a concrete programme to economically integrate the unemployed immigrant will further spike the resentment among them.
Sarkozy realises that as many as 47 per cent of voters gave their verdict against him and his policies. That is why in his victory speech he declared that he would like to be the president of all French men and women. This and his call for national unity will fail to enthuse or convince people if his deeds do not live up to the words. Royal may have been defeated but her constituency is still out there, watching Sarkozy’s next move. Under the circumstances, he has no option but to be a moderate and a pragmatist. If in the ensuing elections to the national assembly the Socialists and the Centrists (Beyrou’s UDF) win the majority seats, the prime minister will be from either one of these parties and Sarkozy will have to settle for ‘cohabitation’. That prospect may become a reality forcing Sarkozy to be more sober and perhaps sombre. By all accounts, his stay in Elysee palace is hardly going to be smooth and restful if his ideas do not change.
MAIN PAGE | TOP
|
|
