A Bangladeshinfo.com Analysis

Despite verbal overtures and pep talks for making democracy institutionalised, the difference between the ruling and the opposition political camps is raising high day by day even in the first year of the regime.

This has once again been implied when the governing BNP-led coalition extended olive branch to Awami League to join the Parliament and the main opposition party outright rejected such move as eyewash effort.

And cooperation between the main power contenders and a resulting participatory democracy remains a far cry for the nation that is desperately looking for ways and means to overcome the abject poverty of all kinds.

Democracy, the present form of Westminster government, in Bangladesh is only decade-old and it is yet to take its root at various segments of the society, not to mention vulnerability of each institution.

At this stage, the major political parties are entangled in such a tussle, which even they themselves do not afford to do, let alone the cost that the nation has to pay for the party leaders' petty personal ego-centric duel. Or else, they should have shown certain tolerant, mental maturity and relatively sound behaviour to each other so that democracy could really bud through a fair practice.

The latest indication by the Prime Minister's Parliamentary Affairs Adviser Salahuddin Qader Chowdhury to bring AL to the House in its budget session hardly drew any enthusiasm even in the media simply because the opposition is unlikely to respond to that as he has some sort of credibility crisis even in his own front following the pre-polls tussle with the party's top brass. So, there are huge communication gap and mistrust plaguing the country's two main political fronts, which have been dictating the course of democracy for the last 10 years and onwards.

Playing their role both as ruling and opposition parties, the two fronts have used a lot of trump cards and, present scenario indicates, they left no magic card available to make any effective political discourse to mend the situation with which political scientists could conduct research.

Perhaps, the parties in Bangladesh do not know their role as parliamentary opposition parties since they eye only on power and put their all efforts either to go to power or to cling to it. They forget that the opposition is a part and parcel of the parliamentary form of government and the opposition has a critical role to play inside the House.

No doubt, the successive governments lack sincerity to involve the opposition in the process of governance and at the same time, the opposition commonly shows frustration for their role as opposition and could not come up with constructive criticism against the governmental activities as shadow government and make the practice of democracy effective and meaningful.

The parties are facing them as belligerents and it is difficult to say where the nation is heading for under their leadership lacking a clear sense of direction for the future.