POLITICAL CRISIS OF BANGLADESH :
Part Two : ANALYZING THE BACKGROUND
ISSUES TO FIND OUT THE REASONS
Prof. Bijon B. Sarma
FACTORS AFFECTING OUR POLITICS :
In this part of the article we shall endeavor to find out who and what
pollutes our political life and election system. Some of the major
factors affecting the politics and political environment of Bangladesh
are the following :
(01) EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE : Only infant child and fools would say
that there is no influence of foreign forces on the politics of
Bangladesh. In the past we have noticed unnatural movement of foreign
diplomats to be followed by killing of our national leaders. During
the past couple of years the government's refusal to accept proposal
from the foreign countries has been found to have been followed by
agitation, managed by foreign-aided NGO's. Only a few months ago the
newspapers published news saying that Khaleda (BNP) collected large
sum of money from the number one enemy-country of our liberation. It
is natural that the political parties which promise to fulfill the
needs of foreign countries get their financial sup****t and blessings.
Only the ruling part get this privilege. Since money play significant
role in their politics, other parties are compelled to do something in
order to stay in completion.
In short we can say, FUNDING BY FOREIGN POWERS TO SOME POLITICAL
PARTIES CREATE IMBALANCE AND COMPELS OTHER PARTIES TO ADOPT
UNETHICAL MEASURES.
(02) MONEY-EARNING TREND IN POLITICS : These days politics has turned
to an excellent money-earning business. As a consequence, businessmen
and ordinary people, whose education and knowledge do not satisfy the
minimum standard of the befitting politicians indulge in this
act. As soon a person is elected, it becomes his unwritten
responsibility to meet the expenses of the party. Naturally once such
a person is elected he starts acquiring wealth in order to : (a) Make
himself, his family, relatives and friends rich, (b) Create fund for
the future elections and (c) Meet the never-ending hunger of the
party.
In short we can say, ENTRY OF NON-STANDARD PEOPLE IN THE POLITICAL
ARENA HAVE LOWERED ITS OVERALL STANDARD AND PERFORMANCES.
(03) REQUIREMENT OF HUGE MONEY FOR THE PARTY : It is a common
experience that in order to maintain a political party one needs
millions of Taka. External finance for some parties make the situation
more complicated for the competing parties. The party collects money
firstly from those who seek election. After these men are elected they
are unofficially assigned to procure or help the party workers to
procure money. Various parties have devised their own mechanism of
collecting money. Some of these are :
(i) Using the local miscreants as party workers on condition that
they would pay commission to the party and the party would save them
from the law enforcing authorities.
(ii) Using various fractions (students, labor, women, youth etc) of
the party to raise money on condition of paying commission to the
party.
(iii) Inflating the rate of tender-able jobs and to give those to
parties willing to give kick-backs.
(iv) Collecting commission from the various corrupt persons and
organizations.
In our system of democratic election, the party needs enormous sum of
money for publicity, maintaining salaried workers, combating
hazardous situations and so on. If the men in politics endeavored to
maintain honesty they could have minimized the party expenditure.
Quite often it does not work because of interferences by foreign
government and multi-national companies.
In short we can say, THE TREMENDOUS COST OF MAINTAINING POLITICAL
PARTY HAS POLLUTED OUR POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT.
PROF. BIJON B. SARMA, ARCHITECTURE DISCIPLINE, KHULNA UNIVERSITY
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