Party Time!

Bangladesh hits a jackpot of blistering parties when election comes. Whilethe Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) dominate,the alternative reality of the smaller parties cannot be ignored, thoughtheyaremostly lost in the fog of irrelevance after elections. Unless none of thetwolargest partiescommand an absolute majority. And it so happened in both 1991 and 1996. Observers are predicting that it might happen again in 2001.

The poll is scheduled for October 1; so far, the election authoritieshave assigned 95 symbols to 95 parties for contesting the next election.1922candidates are running for the 299 Sangshad seats (election in oneconstituency is to be held later). But it isn't as if this conglomeration of smaller partiesis anew trend in Bangladesh, for there were 81 parties in 1996, and 75 in1991.

Both the AL and the BNP are now struggling to stave off the embarrassingrevolt of some prominent individuals who failed to get nominations fromtheir respective parties -- observers are already talking about the"rebelfactor" in next month's election. Meanwhile, a total of 511 candidates finally withdrew on September 6, thelast day of nominations throughout the country.

Atamghati Bangalis?

Why do the Bangladeshis divide themselves into so many parties that are oflittle political significance? Most Bangladeshi parties registered to fightelections are no more than "personalistic" groups, with limited resources tofield candidates beyond a token few. Expectedly, a good number of the 95parties will drop out by the Election Day.

To start with, there were as many as 119 parties in the fray in 1996; later38groups dropped out of the poll in that year. It may be recalled that the samefactional proliferation ofparties along ideological and individual equations was responsible fordestabilizing politics informer East Pakistan.

On the other side of the frontier, personal feuds, from time to time, haveriddled politics in West Bengal (Bangla). Is it partly a manifestation ofwhat Nirad C. Chaudhury calledAtmaghati (suicidal) inclination of the Bangalis? Not really.

Explanations abound. Disgruntled individuals fight for ideology as well aspersonal ambitions, and sometimes, they find it easier to "form"parties intheirliving rooms, instead of building them from their grassroots.Paradoxically, while too many independent groups might make it difficult towork democracy, the democratic right of freedom of speech and assemblyitself makes it easier to start as many parties as people wish.

Smaller parties in a democracy are eliminated by a political attrition, butnotby an arbitrary fiat. It will be unfair to dump all the blames at thedoor of those who run the smaller parties for election or without it. Wehave seen this in the last few weeks -- almost overnight, some individualsswitched from one major party, and joined the other, evidently to getnomination.

While many despise such visibly opportunistic maneuvers, it could be arguedthat such "shelters" saved the nation from further proliferationof newgroups.

Small Is Beautiful?

The collapse of the mainstream parties in the past, for one reason or theother, helped to create smaller parties in Bangladesh. It happened informerEast Pakistan following the Muslim League's defeat in 1954. Later inBangladesh, the powerful AL scuttled itself but only to resurface as theBKSAL, the only legally allowed party in 1975.

When General Ziaur Rahman wanted to "civilianize" his militaryregime, thebody parts of the AL/BKSAL and the old parties were scattered all over thepolitical landscape -- all he had to do was to pick up the pieces from thegamut to float his BNP, which is now leading the 4-party alliance tocontestthe October 1 election.

The former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (Hasina) started with the"consensusgovernment," a buzzword that few took seriously after the AL was ableto bag a lion's share of the women's seats in the Sangshad that gave her a majorityof her own. Anwar Hossain Manju and Abdur Rob, two of Hasina's"consensus"partners, are now contesting election as leaders of two different parties.

The AL despises its dissenters, labelling them as the "anti-liberation" forces,but thatpoisoned spear against the opposition has divided the nation right in themiddle, breeding different groups on two sides of the scale. AL has aunilateral and exclusionary posture to go alone in politics, and has refused toform any electoral alliance even with the left-leaning groups that havesomecommon ground to work together.

More seriously, Hasina's personalization of power is responsible fordiscouraging new comers into the AL except those who want nomination orenjoy partisan advantages.

Inner-Party Democracy

Both the AL and the BNP have failed to practice internal democracy; theyignore other points of view, forcing individual or factions to break away.Diversity of views that finds no outlet thus splinter the larger partiesadding to the number of parties.

We know that former president General H.M. Ershad's Jatiya Party (JP)has at least three main factions including the rump that he leads, and some individual members of that party have joined the BNP or the AL. (Onefactionof the JP led by Najiur Rahman Manzur is with the BNP-led alliance butAnwarHossain Manju's (JP) group is contesting independently. Ershad's own (JP)faction has aligned with an Islamic group, and is contesting the elections underthe original JP symbol, the plough.)

The BNP's inner disagreementsbetween those who wanted an alliance with the right wing parties and thosewho opposed it, and the tensions between those who boycotted the Sangshadand those who had reservations about it are the shifting tectonics of theparty, no matter what happens to the BNP in the next election.

It's no different for AL. Kader Siddiqi broke away from the AL and formed his own party,and when he left, he blamed Hasina's unaccommodating style of running theparty. His departure has not yet made a big dent on the AL, but it sure hasadded yet another party in the political arena.

The big parties apparently do not take the nomination process seriouslyearly on; beyond hearsay, they do not conduct enough research on who arethebest available candidates, and the extent of their electablity beyond thefact that many of them are incumbents or favorites of the top leaders.

Neither Hasina nor Khaleda, it seems, anticipated strong resistance of thecandidates who did not receive party tickets to stand in elections. Some ofthose who did not get nominations would either yield to their leaders orrunas independents with or without a party label. They might sway the outcomein those constituencies where only a couple of thousand or a few hundredvoters could hold the balance between the winners and losers.

But Is Small Ignorable?

So far, much of the fear of the small parties has been academic; thefailureof the larger parties is much starker than the deluge of smaller parties.For more than one reason, there is a public disinclination towards the twomain parties -- that public frustration may be expressed by voting for thesmaller ones. It might contribute to a hung parliament with neither the ALnor the BNP-led alliance getting absolute majority, which will add to theimportance of the lesser parties. Ershad has already announced that none ofthe bigger parties would be able to form government without his help.

Both the two main parties have opened doors to retired bureaucrats, formermilitary officers and rich businesspersons for which the AL and the BNPoffer an array of reasons, which are not banal. But it lets down the oldhands who have been working with the larger parties for years.

The four-party alliance has a special problem -- thesmaller partners had threatened to break away over the nomination battle, whichwould be damaging for the BNP, still licking its wound from the desertionofErshad's Jatiya Party (JP).

With so many parties around, the AL is facing a different and potentially amore serious problem because of its most recent incumbency. Writing for aBengali daily, an AL-inclined columnist recently vented his frustrationagainst the JSD (Rob) and the JP (Manju) factions (they shared power withHasina) for their attack on the immediate past AL government.

Hasina would surely be in a tough spot if a good fraction of the smallerparties increase the attacks against the AL on the eve of elections. It isprecisely for this reason, in an effort to diffuse thegrowing AL-bashing, that Hasina has recently hinted that she might again workwithsmaller parties to form her government, if necessary.