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The 13th national election is barely a month away. Now, is the atmosphere congenial to holding a general election? If maintenance of law and order is a prerequisite for holding a free, fair and peaceful poll, a unanimous verdict would be in the negative. Killings by shooting, beating, hacking and stabbing have almost become a daily routine. It is not just mob violence instigated with an ulterior motive to take someone's life that is of concern, there are several cases of clandestine political vendetta in recent time. In the majority of such incidents, the victims are from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the party tipped for winning the election. The latest such victim is Azizur Rahman Musabbir, a senior leader of the Bangladesh Swechhasebak Dal who once held the post of general secretary of this wing in Dhaka City north.
All such murders in pre-poll violence did not receive due attention because of the widespread shock and outrage Inquilab Manch convener Sharif Osman bin Hadi's killing caused. Secretary General of the BNP, Fakhrul Islam Alamgir lamented that the government was least bothered about the killing of several leaders of his party. Again, a senior BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed complained that the killing of Azizur Rahman was pre-planned. The two aggrieved leaders' complaints point at something ominous. What is important is to admit that political murders are all pre-planned, rarely carried out from personal vengeance.
A lot of calculations go into taking a life of political rivals. When such murders become almost a routine, question must be asked if those are carried out under a blueprint. In this country, human life could not be cheaper. People's cruelty and barbarity have crossed all limits by this time. The way a group of people suddenly turn violent on the hearsay that someone has stolen something or was trying to steal or desecrated the holy book is shocking. Insanity knows no bound when they maltreat a human being---one of their kind. They take the law into their own hands to deliver the death penalty.
The government's laidback attitude and reaction to such deaths is in fact responsible, by default, for instigating the political elements to go for murder of the opponents. There is nothing to be surprised if a party with their similar murky past, has been the sponsor of the selective murders. The murders of local political activists including the Swechhasebak leader in Dhaka, Jashore, Shariatpur and Narasingdi point to the fact that these are committed with one common objective in mind. Although, media reports do not highlight how popular the murdered men were in their respective areas, it can be assumed that their popularity proved fatal for them. The opponents may have calculated that if alive they would prove vital for election campaign in favour of the rival parliamentary candidates in their respective constituencies.
So fragile is the law and order right at this moment, the interim government and the Election Commission (EC) will find it tough to manage the situation for the month running up to the election day. The interim government has never given a good account of bringing the lawlessness under control. Even the inspector general of the police (IG) candidly admitted that if there is political pressure, it is difficult to manage the general election. True, cooperation from the political parties is vital for holding election. But if lawlessness cannot be reined in at the grassroots level, maintaining discipline in election proves even tougher.
Both members of civil society and ordinary people are apprehensive of a peaceful election because of the pre-poll violence. The top brass of the interim government has often asserted that this election will be an exemplary one. Surely, this assertion is not in the negative sense. But if appears that the government has not done its homework to hold such an election. There is no point blaming the EC which is yet to make its presence felt. It has asked for sufficient contingents of law enforcement agencies during the election time. But such agencies are incapable of providing security beyond the poll venues.
This is exactly why there is a need for ground work well before the election day. The police are yet to command esteem from the public, least of all from the leaders of the July-August uprising. There could not be a better example of this lack of respect and decency in an incident when a leader of the student against discrimination (SAD) threatens the officer-in-charge of Shayestaganj police station under Habiganj. A section of SAD members and the police cannot see eye to eye as yet. How can the agency control, without active help from border guards of Bangladesh (BGB) and the army, the law and order during election. Intelligence services should have long been deployed with the assignment of detection of high-risk poll centres. Even if such ground works are duly done, people need to be assured of security by the actions taken during the one month left to remove threats posed to peaceful holding of the scheduled election.