Font size: 
The circumstances under which the government is shouting about reformation should be noted, however. When, how and what type of reformation is to be implemented? People do not know what reform process has been mandated or which institutions are on the priority list. It is also important to learn about the partners, performers and composers of this widely discussed issue. Who is leading the show as the nation's true reformer?
People only know that their fundamental rights -- freedom of assembly and expression, including indoor and outdoor political activities -- have been suspended. They cannot criticize the interim government for fear of arbitrary arrest, detention and other forms of repression at the hands of the armed forces and police. People are forced to praise the army and the government despite ongoing arrests, detentions, torture, killings and fabricated charges against thousands of people.
On one hand, the basic rights of Bangladesh's citizens are being restricted; on the other hand, the government is pretending to preach reform of its institutions, particularly political institutions, including political parties and their practices, through either replacing some people in office or enacting new laws.
The Bangladesh Election Commission, whose secretariat is under the Office of the Prime Minister, has been discussed as an important institution that needs reforming. In the past, the EC was a ping-pong table for the ruling political parties. Recruitment of election commissioners, including the chief election commissioner and field-level staff, was based on political loyalty instead of the knowledge, conscience and competence of the person. Ultimately, the politicization of institutions, including the EC, politically divided people's thinking, and the nation, as a result, has paid a high price.
For instance, the EC allegedly included imaginary people on the electoral rolls, added communities on the electoral lists that were eroded and washed away by swollen rivers years ago and ignored thousands of real citizens for political purposes. This manipulation of the electoral process, of course, is to ensure maximum benefit to the ruling political parties. In the process, millions of dollars of taxpayers' money has been wasted. Sadly, a sitting judge of the Appellate Division was the head of the EC and was the key person responsible for these misdeeds.
Recently, the EC has three new people at the top--a former bureaucrat as the chief election commissioner, with a retired army officer and another bureaucrat as commissioners replacing the past puppets. However, the same blood is being circulated within the body of the EC.
The EC has been talking about political reform for a period of time. For instance, all political parties must presently be registered with the EC, and the income and expenditures of the political parties, as well as their leaders, during the elections and throughout the year must be maintained transparently and must be audited. In fact, however, these practices do not exist in the country. There are numerous instances of bureaucrats joining politics within a few hours. One could be a civil servant in the morning and turn into a politician in the afternoon. This shamelessness has reached such a state that a sitting judge has engaged in election campaigning on weekends, declaring his candidature for the upcoming general election on behalf of the ruling political party without any warning or punishment from the government and without any moral and ethical conflict in his conscience.
There is a huge hue and cry for legislation prohibiting the participation of public servants, including officials of the armed forces as well as the judiciary, at least for three to five years after their retirement.
Furthermore, people want to know how the political parties and their leaders earn money and how much is spent for political programs, including elections, because of the bitter experiences of the past. The law, for example, only permits candidates to spend 300,000 takas (more than US$4,300); but in the past, they spent as much as 50 million takas (more than US$72,400) and submitted a fake report to the EC, which ignored the actual amount spent and failed to investigate. Such practices paved the way for black moneymongers to purchase legislative seats and explains why few people with a genuine pro-people political background have been elected, a corrupt political ritual that is more than enough to destroy democracy and the rule of law in Bangladesh, a country where politics is a profession of a certain group of people -- a matter of life and death for them and others.
Observers believe that the EC is confused about its goal. A few days ago, for instance, the EC talked about banning retired public servants from participating in politics, and now the EC wants to allow them to do so as usual. No one is aware of the EC's intention. Do they want the present military generals and their friends to take part in the parliamentary election? It must be clarified.
The government is also playing a dubious role regarding restrictions on political activities. On one hand, the well-established political parties have been demoralized and pushed into a voiceless corner. Meanwhile, a group of part-time politicians are drafting a new political platform and abusing the word reformation with their so-called "minus two formula," which means expelling the two leaders of Bangladesh's two large political parties -- Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League.
By allowing this plan to proceed, the military-backed interim government has proved that it has an agenda different than reform of the country's dysfunctional political system, for the people involved in the making of the new political platform are also allegedly corrupt, black moneymongers and power abusers. Moreover, some of them have no political base in the country. They are just trying to take advantage of the opportunities of the present time and are pretending to be "reformists." They fail to exhibit any moral or ethical standards. It appears that the government is going to impose another group of plunderers upon the nation in the name of "reformation" as they are silent about what is occurring politically in the country as well as assisting these strategies.
Reformation must take place through a regular and realistic approach based on people's opinions, preferably in order to reconstruct rather than repair the impaired organs of the state. Consequently, the state of emergency is not the right time to initiate political reforms nor is the military-backed regime the right government to play the role of reformists.
--
(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human right defender living in Sylhet in Bangladesh who has been working on human rights issues in the country for more than a decade and who was a journalist in Bangladesh in the 1990s.)
