Staging Hamlet without the prince

"The BNP has exposed for everyone as plain as daylight that the 15th amendment is a tool to implement the Awami League’s BAKSAL vision of one-party rule."

THE secretary general of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party rejected the Election Commission or the commission’s invitation as a ‘trick’, a strategy of the AL government. The commission knew that the BNP would reject its invitation but invited it nevertheless, because the AL government wanted to show everybody, particularly the United States and its western allies, that it is keen on holding a free and fair election and that it tried to bring the BNP to the election.

The Awami League’s strategy in asking the commission to invite the BNP to talks was, nevertheless, a ploy to hold another election like the controversial elections of 2014 and 2018 and blame the BNP if the next election also turned out the same way. The commission and the Awami League are in denial over the sea changes that have taken place in Bangladesh’s domestic and international environment expecting to hold another election like those that they held in 2014 and 2018 and expect the BNP to participate.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has brought to the public domain the most important of these sea changes, namely the designs of the 15th amendment that the Awami League passed in June 2011. The BNP’s efforts carried out with great human sacrifices have now made it palpably evident that the Awami League had enacted the 15th amendment to implement its BAKSAL vision of a one-party system.

The BNP boycotted the 2014 election to expose the 15th amendment that turned it into a non-election. There was no election to 153 seats that the commission and the government knew as soon as the last day of withdrawal of nominations passed with a month left for the election. Yet, they held the election in denial of the fact that a party needed 151 seats for a majority in a parliament of 300 seats.

The BNP participated in the 2018 election to survive. Otherwise, it would have lost its legal rights as a political party under Bangladesh’s election laws having boycotted the 2014 election. The BNP was also trapped in a political black hole leading to the 2018 election because of the Awami League’s repressive measures. The BNP’s predicament was further compounded because the US-EU and the UN did not want it in power on the excuse of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism and were ready to label it as a terrorist party if it tried to challenge the Awami League in the streets.

The US-EU and the UN are now favouring a free and fair national election which is a U-turn for them and a paradigm shift for the BNP, with the opposition looking ahead to the 2014 national election. It does not need these external powers to fight for the political and economic rights of the people of Bangladesh. It appears confident that it can win if the US-EU and UN do not stand against it for fulfilling their global interests as they had done leading to the 2014 and 2018 elections.

The BNP has already showed its strength and confidence through the 10 divisional rallies it held between October and December 2022 to demand the next general election under the caretaker government system. The rallies were peaceful to a fault, attended by hundreds of thousands who were not just BNP supporters but also ordinary people who have been pushed to the wall by the toxic mix of the denial of political and economic rights. Millions are now under dire economic pressure as a result of the downslide of the Bangladesh economy in the aftermath of the Russia–Ukraine war.

The BNP’s divisional rallies flagged fundamental changes in Bangladesh’s politics. First, the BNP-led opposition has overcome fears and is ready to challenge the AL government in the streets for the first time since 2009. It overcame all conceivable and inconceivable obstacles, even death, and attended these rallies that underlined its determination to fight. Second, the BNP’s movement is not its movement any more. It has become the movement of people, supported by all opposition parties.

The BNP, often criticised for its 2001–2006 term, has held the space for the opposition to fight for the political and economic rights of people against tremendous odds not seen even in the worst days of the Pakistan era except the period of the war of liberation. It has suffered, since the regime came to power in January 2009, incarceration, false cases, enforced disappearances and death to expose its acts against democracy and human and electoral rights.

The BNP’s courage and tenacity exposed the 15th amendment’s ridiculous provision for keeping the parliament active during the national election graphically. In parliamentary democracies everywhere, the parliament is annulled before national elections are held. The Awai League and its allies by the 15th amendment’s provision to keep the parliament active during the election will, thus, have the privilege of nominating in all the seats of the next general election candidates who would be members of parliament and contest in the next with all their privileges as MPs against opposition candidates of whom not even one would be an MP.

These MP candidates of the AL and allies will have the additional advantage of ‘contesting’ in the next national election under their government headed by a prime minister who has been in office since January 2009. If the playing field can be made any more uneven for the BNP and opposition candidates, which may be difficult to imagine, the candidates of the Awami League and allies will have the members of the civil bureaucracy and the law enforcement agencies eager to see the Awami League win for a fourth term.

The BNP has, thus, exposed for everybody as plain as daylight that the 15th amendment has been placed in the constitution to, first, implement the Awami League’s BAKSAL vision of one-party rule and, second, as the trap for any opposition political party or parties daring to challenge the Awami League’s BAKSAL vision in a national election. It is, indeed, unfortunate that civil society failed to see these designs in the 15th amendment and speak out against it, for the amendment is an antithesis to parliamentary democracy.

Instead, some civil society members blamed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party for boycotting the 2014 national election. Some of them are now insensitively supporting the Awami League’s s stand that the BNP’s demand for the caretaker government is unconstitutional. Indeed, the caretaker government system is not in the constitution any more, but it is also true that it is the Awami League that forced the BNP in 1996 to adopt it as the 13th amendment as the panacea for a free and fair election and, thus, wanted it ‘forever.’ And the Awami League amended the constitution most in the past for serving its interest. In 1974, it changed the fundamental character of the constitution from a multi-party democracy to the one-party BAKSAL system.

The BNP has successfully placed these political realities in the public domain. These developments are now all part of the political drama scripted for everybody except those in denial whose final act would be the next general election. Can that final act be written and the curtain drawn if the BNP sticks to its caretaker government demand and the Election Commission conducts the next election under the 15th amendment? Only a crystal ball would be able to provide the answer at this stage.

The oft-repeated phrase ‘Hamlet without the prince of Denmark’ may, however, allude to an answer. This phrase came into usage long after the death of Shakespeare while the play was being staged in London in 1775. The principal actor fled with the innkeeper’s daughter the night before the play. The director came before the audience the next day and stated that ‘the part of Hamlet to be left out for that night.’ The director’s ploy failed and ever since, the phrase has stuck in the English language to denote ‘an event or an occasion at which the principal participant is not present.’

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has emerged as a principal participant in the next general election drama as the main opposition. There is no third party in Bangladesh’s politics any more. The Election Commission would, nevertheless, hold the next election that the BNP would boycott because of the 15th amendment. The predicament of the next general election, if held without the BNP, would, therefore, be the same that befell the director of the Hamlet play in London, ie, there cannot be Hamlet without the prince.

Postscript: The Election Commission will, nevertheless, enact Hamlet without the prince for that appears to be the AL-led government’s plan now. This will force the political drama to the streets where the final act of this play is likely to be staged.

(This article was originally published in New Age)