National consensus government
In the backdrop of mixed reactions from the political parties and individual politicians, Dr. B. Chowdhury has now come up with little more information on his idea of national consensus government. He is talking about three phases, and at the same time setting some kind of conditions like denial of the idea would mean supporting terrorism, corruption etc, etc, and also talking about ultimate option for a referendum. We will have to wait for political reactions again. Hopefully, Dr. Chowdhury would ensure justice to his idea by making issues for consensus very concrete with clear agenda. The piecemeal approach and patchwork are not helping the march for clean democracy the people want to see in Bangladesh
We think there is a sound rationale behind the reaction of the politicians and the political parties. Only after election the question of a broad based consensus can be mooted out, anything before might add a few more conditions imposed by a political party or political thinkers, and might also disturb the general election planned for October/December 2008.
We think the election manifesto of each participating political party would demonstrate the issues for seeking mandate of the people, and definitely this would include anti-terrorism, anti corruption role of the parties. The election manifesto would be the basis of consensus to be mooted out after the election. It is always advisable to pursue a political goal by keeping the spirit of popular democracy at the top of the agenda, which means open and unconditional general election.
We are sure that neither Dr Chowdhury's nor any other political party in Bangladesh expects that the one-party government is reborn and the multi-party politics pushed out. Any national goal should be achieved in a bipartisan manner following the principles of democracy. It is natural that there would be two main streams in the parliament, one is government coalition and the other is coalition of the opposition. After all that happened after January 11, 2007, we expect that the politicians would surely learn to behave both inside and outside the parliament and follow the peaceful and constructive political path. And they should not bypass the basic rules of democracy to go to power.
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