The precipitate withdrawal by Prof. Muhammad
Yunus from the political arena was an unexpected
as was his announcement of launching a party. The
emphasis is on the word precipitate since neither
decision was necessarily surprising. His decision
to enter politics originated in a generally felt
need for an alternative to the political duopoly
which had contributed to Bangladesh’s
malfunctioning democracy. His withdrawal
originated in his disappointment at the failure
of members of civil and political society to
immediately join him on his political platform.

Had Yunus launched his foray into politics with
more caution and planning he would not have had
to depend on such instantaneous responses to his
initiative. If he was seeking to bring in a new
constituency of activists from civil society to
join him in politics, he should have been aware
that this class would react with caution. Most of
them are not professional politicians, they have
livelihoods, organizations to run, family
responsibilities and expectations for the future.
It is no accident that they have sat on the
side-lines of politics for so long, limiting
their activism to seminars, statements, and the
occasional street rally. For them to cross the
line into full-scale political activism involves
an existential decision which is not made so
readily.

The fact that Yunus was willing to cross this
line, giving up his international celebrity
status where he regularly meets with monarchs and
presidents around the world and to separate
himself from the Grameen organization which he
has built with his sweat and blood into a
Nobel-worthy institution, was indeed a major
decision. He may have naturally expected that if
he was willing to make such a major sacrifice,
lesser mortals should have been willing to make
their own sacrifices.

However, human logic does not work that way.
Yunus has already achieved everything. If his
political venture goes wrong he will still be a
global celebrity with the added recognition that
he tried his best to introduce a new political
culture into Bangladesh. His associates may not
be able to return to their old lives so easily
and so had to compute their costs and benefits
from political activism more carefully. In due
course, some and eventually many among civil
society may have joined Yunus, but this decision
would have taken time, depending on who else was
taking the first step across the line and the
political impact of the new party.

Yunus also expected some political activists from
the existing political parties to join him. There
is a considerable disillusionment within the
mainstream political parties with the leadership,
and apprehension that reform within the parties
would not be possible without democratizing the
party’s decision making process. In such
circumstances at least some members of these
parties were not averse to exploring new options.
Some of these smaller parties and their leaders
may also have looked for a new political rallying
point with an inspirational leader such as Yunus
or may have sought to build political alliances
with his party. Some of these parties have, for
some time, been clamoring for a third force in
Bangladesh politics.

However, politicians are political animals. They
understand success and are less prone to quixotic
gestures. If the new party was a going concern
they would be more inclined to review their
options. They would also like to know more about
the future of the mainstream parties and the
scope for reform as well as political
realignments within these parties. To form the
new party has political costs which could only be
borne if the eventual benefits of accessing power
would be seen as within the realms of the
feasible.

In such circumstances, the notion that political
activists of diverse times would instantly rally
to him was quite an unreasonable expectation on
the part of Yunus. More to the point few people,
whether from civil society or the existing
political parties, would respond to Yunus without
being presented with a clearer idea of where
Yunus was coming from and where he was going.

In Bangladesh’s political culture, fantasy plays
a big part and everyone is free to invent or
imagine all sorts of conspiracies. Yunus, as with
any other political figure, would thus have
needed to persuade people that he is his own man
with his own agenda. One way for Yunus to
establish his bona-fides would have been to sit
with various constituencies in civil society —
human rights activists, women’s groups, workers
and peasant organizations, professional bodies
and with ordinary citizens’ groups around the
country, to share their concerns about the
nation, discuss their ideas for change, and
discern their expectations from a new party.

In turn, Yunus would have needed to spell out his
own vision for the future, and how he hoped to
operationalize his vision into concrete solutions
for problems facing the country within a
time-bound context. He would have to spell out
the nature of the party he hoped to organize, and
the sort of people he expected to join the party.
Through such an interactive process, he would
expect to project his own agenda, mobilize
support, recruit members and gradually build a
national organization. Such a process would take
time, pain, sweat, and disappointments. It would
involve mistakes, but above all, it would
generate knowledge, and experience, the most
important capital needed to build a new party. I
am not privy to the specific motives which
persuaded Yunus to withdraw from politics so it
would not be appropriate for me to pass judgment
on the wisdom of his decision.

However, his departure leaves Bangladesh politics
with the same political vacuum which has
incubated festering problems which continue to
demand resolution. This is not to suggest that
Yunus and his party were the answer to these
problems and may indeed have been still-born. But
we have to recognize that we are in this crisis
because our mainstream political parties have,
over successive regimes, failed to meet the
expectations of their voters and have, instead,
left us mired in a swamp of corruption, violence,
and malgovernance, from which the nation needs to
escape.

It is clear from history, our own and from that
of other countries, that military rule is no
answer to a nation’s problems. All political
reforms have to be democratically mandated or
they cannot be sustained. In the absence of any
political alternative, we have to ask ourselves
whether our major parties are in a position to
regenerate themselves.

For example, can the BNP aspire to reform the
party within the present dynastic leadership
structure, or indeed are the very structures of
the party corroded and its leaders too committed
to their own aggrandizement to reconfigure the
party. What we are learning every day about the
functioning of the BNP, particularly during its
recent tenure in office, suggests that a
significant part of its leadership and echelons
below them conceive of politics exclusively as an
instrument for personal gain.

In the case of the Awami League, current
realities demonstrate that as long as Sheikh
Hasina chooses to remain in politics she is
likely to remain the undisputed leader of the
party. So the question to be answered is whether
Sheikh Hasina herself recognizes that there is a
need for reform in her party and whether she is
willing to initiate such a process in
collaboration with her colleagues.

Some concrete initiatives for reform urgently
demanded from the Awami League leaders would
include the democratization of the party, making
its finances transparent, ensuring that
candidates with a record of service to the party
and a clean image are nominated, while musclemen
within the party or those with only their wealth
to recommend them are marginalized. Some of these
actions such as choosing clean candidates and
marginalizing mastaans need to be made part of
the agenda of all parties otherwise the Awami
League would feel politically disadvantaged.

However, reform is not just about process, it is
also about what a party has to offer in order to
earn public confidence. Thus, the Awami League
has to also rediscover its sense of mission as a
party. The party has a long history, which has
associated it with all the major democratic
struggles in Bangladesh, of which the liberation
struggle was its most defining moment. The
struggles demanded a close bond between the party
and the people.

Yet many of the problems afflicting the Awami
League originate in its distancing itself from
the very social forces which sustained it and
from the constituencies of the deprived who once
invested their faith in the party. By trying to
appear as all things to all people the Awami
League of today appears to have lost its sense of
purpose and in many areas appears
indistinguishable from its principal opponent.
This has led it into a variety of political
compromises with political forces which are
totally inimical to what the Awami League once
stood for. The party thus needs to rethink where
it came from and where it intends to take the
country.

In rethinking its mission, the Awami League needs
to reach out to its old constituencies and to
seek out new social forces, which have, in recent
years, contributed to what is positive in the
country. Its old support bases, long abandoned by
the Awami League, include the class of small
entrepreneurs, who remain neglected by every
government, the working class who were always a
source of strength for Bangabandhu, but are now
an abandoned constituency, and the small farmers
who have tripled our food production, but under
donor pressure been starved of resources and
victimized by policy.

New forces which remain ignored by all parties
and demand attention include the youth, most of
whom remain undereducated and unprepared for the
market so they are now a fertile recruiting
ground for criminal gangs and mastaan politics.
Bangladesh today has bred a class of creative,
honest, non-defaulting, tax paying entrepreneurs
who have led our export boom and could provide a
new generation of entrepreneurs to accelerate our
growth. This class desperately needs a political
home which the Awami League can provide. New
constituencies are to be found among women of all
classes but particularly the micro-credit
borrowers and garment workers who have
demonstrated their worth to the economy.
Similarly, large numbers of workers scattered
across the country remain an important resource
along with the educated professional classes who
need to be better utilized.

If such constituencies are to be mobilized, the
Awami League will have to fashion concrete
policies and programs which are responsive to the
needs of these constituencies and beyond them to
the voters. These commitments cannot be perceived
as electoral slogans but must be made credible
through well-thought out time bound programs. To
develop such a forward-looking agenda, the Awami
League should initiate its own reform process in
consultation with civil society, drawing upon the
services of various think tanks and professional
organizations such as the Bangladesh Economic
Association. To do so the party will have to move
beyond its core of party faithful and broaden its
reach.

If the Awami League fails to visibly engage
itself in such a process of regeneration, can a
new third force emerge in response to the hunger
for political change? I personally see no real
prospect in the next two years for such a force,
capable of actually organizing itself and winning
an election in 2008, emerging in the political
arena. I could be wrong. After all, nature abhors
a vacuum and so there will always be some attempt
to respond to the popular demand for reform.

Without a third force or credible move for reform
in the mainstream political parties which can
respond to this universally felt need for change,
Bangladesh could move into a period of deep
uncertainty. All the effort to structure a free
and fair election, eradicate corruption, and
overhaul the administration, could all unravel
during the post-electoral period without a
credible commitment from all contesting parties
to sustain these reforms.

This could set up another round of
confrontational politics, which will take us back
to where we started from at the beginning of this
year. They say history repeats itself, first as
tragedy then as farce. My fear is that the next
phase of tragedy may be too protracted and
painful for us to enjoy the farce.