Going Back to Normal

Election Day has come and gone with little incident.

The Interim Government deserves kudos for delivering an election that was peaceful, safe, and efficient.

There had been plenty of apprehension in the run up to February 12 as to whether law and order would be maintained and whether the voting and counting process would go smoothly.

In the end, not only was Election Day calm and quiet, with voters being able to cast their vote without hindrance, but there was no major issue with the tabulation.

When the dust had settled, we had a BNP government waiting in the wings, with the Jamaat-e-Islami alliance set to form the opposition.

The first truly positive sign post-election had been the graceful and gracious conceding of the election and congratulations to the other side on the part of the Jamaat Ameer.

This alone was almost unprecedented and the best of all signs.

At the end of the day, it is not enough to have good elections, but all sides must believe that the elections were free and fair, and the gracious concession of the losing side is a key indicator of the days to come.

More than anything else, what Bangladeshi voters want to see is normalcy.

We don’t ask for a great deal. We simply want a normal country where parties can lose elections without facing annihilation, and where political discourse can be civil and restrained, and where elections need not be a matter of life and death.

We want a country where one side wins, the other side loses, but everyone lives to fight another day.

We want a country where the government and the opposition can be civil to one another, and where opposition is voiced on the floor of the parliament, and the opposition does not need to take to the streets in order to be heard.

We want a country where our elected leaders and government officials will listen to what we have to say so that we never again have to risk life and limb in order to have our grievances redressed, as happened during that fateful summer of 2024.

The prime minister in waiting has promised us rule of law, and that is all we ask for.

Rule of law means that we have the right to voice our discontents without fear of arrest or worse.

It means that we can hope for a country where the jails are not filled with innocent men and women and where opposition to the government is not a blood sport.

It means that every Bangladeshi can demand their day in court, and expect that they will be heard by a judge without partiality or prejudice, and that the law will be applied equally to every Bangladeshi, be they prince or pauper or something in between.

It means that police officers and government officials will do their job and not misuse their position to either line their own pockets or advance only the interests of those close to them.

If you listen, especially to the young men and women of the country, what you hear again and again is all they are asking for is a fair shake.

The people of Bangladesh do not ask that the government solve all or even any of their problems.

They ask only that the government not be the source of their problems and that it simply does its job without favour or fanfare.

They don’t want special treatment, they want equal treatment.

They don’t want special favours, they want fairness.

And above all, they want normalcy, they want civility, they want decency.

We want the years when politics was marked by bad blood and ill feeling and disputes were settled in the jail cell if you were lucky and by a bullet if you were not -- to be put behind us for good.

Let us pledge to come together as a nation and resolve our differences in a civilized manner.

Let us pledge that Bangladesh will henceforth be governed as the republic we are and not a personal fiefdom of those in power.

And let us finally pledge that the horrors of the summer of 2024 will never occur again, and that our children will never again have to put themselves in harm's way to be heard or to receive the rights that are due to them as Bangladeshis.

Zafar Sobhan is the Editor of the weekly Counterpoint.