Hollow Promises of BNP’s State Reform Outline

Dr. Rashid Askari:

After the 10 December (2022) direct action programme proved largely abortive, BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) has lost face to such an extent that they are hardly likely to go for similar programmes soon. Now, they are trying to save their face otherwise by placing before the nation a whole slew of reforms aimed at, as BNP puts it, repairing the constitutional, judicial and administrative structure of the country.

On December 19, 2022 they held a press conference at Dhaka Westin hotel which was attended, among others, by their stalwarts and the sole representatives of their current political allies-- Mahmudur Rahman Manna of Nagrik Oikya, Kallyan Party Chairman Syed Muhammad Ibrahim, Zunayed Saki of Gonosanghati Andolan, Secretary General of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Redwan Ahmed and Labor Party Chairman Mustafizur Rahman. BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman, as usual, joined the event virtually from far-flung London. BNP Standing Committee member Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain has announced a 27-point outline of the state reform plan suggesting a radical overhaul of the state system which the party intends to implement upon their assumption of power.

BNP’s reform proposal has stirred things up in the political arena of the country. Even it so happened that after the presentation of the paper when the journalists tried to put questions to the conference presenter as quite a simple procedure, he quickly left the podium and the eager journalists were denied the chance of a question-answer session even though, the BNP in its newfangled outline proposal, announced a while back, advocates the access to information by forming a ‘Media Commission’ for journalists. When asked about the absence of a question-answer session, the party leaders glossed over the issue and beat a hasty retreat.
BNP’s Westin conference has brought forward what they called “An Outline of the Structural Reforms of the State”. In this pretty long pamphlet BNP has cried foul and made an awful lot of thinly veiled accusations against the ruling government without providing a shred of evidence. They have expressed a sense of impending doom in the country shedding crocodile tears for the people. They have blown their own trumpet so loudly as if their party BNP during their regime had provided us with a land of milk and honey.

In their 27-point reform outline, they made some proposals which could have a boomerang effect on themselves. BNP proposed to set up a ‘Constitution Reform Commission’ to repeal/amend “all unreasonable, controversial and undemocratic constitutional amendments”. This sounds patently ridiculous. It is an acknowledged fact that the most draconian law in the country’s history called the Indemnity Ordinance was promulgated by the self-proclaimed President Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad to grant the heinous August 1975 killers immunity from prosecution. But it was the founder of BNP, the country’s first Army dictator Major General Ziaur Rahman who converted the notorious Ordinance into the Indemnity Act in 1979. Not only that, Gen. Zia validated all laws made under his four- year martial law regime through the introduction of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. It is worth mentioning that the law was finally repealed only after Sheikh Hasina’s assumption of power in 1996. Zia’s regime was furthest removed from what we call democracy. So, the proposal to repeal/amend the ‘unreasonable, controversial and undemocratic constitutional amendments’ to be done by Zia’s BNP reminds us of the proverbial thief’s mother who talks a good game.

The creation of a ‘Rainbow Nation’ by way of forming a ‘National Reconciliation Committee’ is a pale imitation of South African archbishop Desmond Tutu’s concept of post-apartheid South Africa elaborated by Nelson Mandela. There is nothing new in a so-called rainbow nation and it is not that relevant today. Mandela’s legacy of the Rainbow Nation is no longer a down to earth development roadmap and has produced diminishing returns in about three decades. You can read the noted author and veteran British politician Peter Hain’s 2016 piece published in ‘The Guardian’ where he contends that “Nelson Mandela’s rainbow nation has gone from hero to zero”.

BNP is a party bankrupt of new ideas. They seem to have vainly followed Awami League who did wonders on the people of Bangladesh during the 2008 elections by coming up with the Charter for Change—the Digital Bangladesh and Vision 2021 which was later complemented by Vision 2041 and Delta Plan 2100. Besides, BNP’s proposal for a national reconciliation committee smacks of Zia’s hybridization of post-August 15 politics which gave way to the politicking of the defeated forces of 1971.

The idea of an ‘Election Time Non-Party Care-Taker Government’ is incompatible with the country’s constitution and has left us in a once bitten twice shy situation. How can we forget the dreaded moments of the 1/11 regime?

The provision of the Upper House of the Legislature may yield to a top-heavy parliamentary system and pose threats to the practice of democracy. In addition, the selection of the unelected high-ups may promote nepotism and favouritism and vitiate the true spirit of democracy.
BNP’s reform outline proposes the cliched view of independence of judiciary. The party who appointed a judge with fake certificates and was caught with their pants down; during whose tenure another judge returned a verdict in consultation with the Chhatra Dal general secretary; and who set a precedent by raising the age limit of judges to give someone the opportunity to become the head of the following caretaker government, does not deserve to cry over the loss of judicial independence. BNP also gives many other reform proposals which do not fit into BNP’s current reform theory. And their clarion call for national unity and their appeals for a national government must have a hollow ring.

Courtesy: The Daily Sun 
Dr. Rashid Askari is a freethinking writer, academic and translator.