Democracy is never served by refusing to compromise

OUR leaders are so blinded by their ego that they don’t realise that a step back sometimes serves one’s self interest far getter than by mindless pushing towards, what is falsely thought to be, forward.
The present political stalemate is a case in point. Both the leaders are convinced that having it their way is a move forward to attain their respective goals. The fact that their “will not move a hair” or “blow your hair way” stance may end up moving the whole election and blowing democracy away, does not seem to have entered their thought.
Everybody except them appears to know well that the paths they have chosen can only lead to clashes, violence, death and into political ‘troubled waters where unwanted elements may fish in.’ In fact, so pessimistic is the mood that some people say ‘no one will need to come to fish, people will invite them to do so.’
So knowing all this, why do our two supreme leaders persist in, what is patently, a self-destructive path? The answer is that they confuse “stubbornness with leadership, steadfastness with being principled and, most regrettably, with courage.”
They remind us of a characteristic of elephants. These powerful beasts are kept confined in circular lairs, the enclosures of which are kept propped by angular pillars from outside, with no inside support. The elephants know only how to push, and the more they push the more the outside pillars prevent the barriers from falling. Only if the elephants pulled at the barriers with their trunks, the whole edifice would crumble and the elephants would go free. But they never pull but only push, and so they always remain imprisoned.
Only if our leaders knew how to step back once in a while, give a little space to their opponents, find some logic, some sincerity among those they oppose, we could have solved, most, if not all, of our problems. The lack of trust is so pervasive that there is nothing about each other that they believe, except perhaps the worst.
We, as a people, must share a lot of responsibility for this. Once when Awami League was in the opposition and this paper was writing constantly, vigorously and relentlessly against hartals, parliament boycott, and against the opposition’s negative politics in general (this we do today, as we have been doing ever since our birth, and through all regimes), Sheikh Hasina told this writer that “the party that calls hartals, boycotts the parliament and all the things you criticise, gets elected the next time there is an election”.
Subsequent events vindicated her stance and will do so once again if BNP wins, if the mayoral polls are any indication, the elections in spite of all the hartals, boycotts and negative politics they have indulged in.
Observers say that we never vote for a party but always against the other. It is “rejection” that dominates our thoughts. So while we criticise our leaders for being negative we must accept the blame that we reward them for it. We must introspect as to how long we should continue such politics, how does it help us to modernise our country and how indeed does it help to energise the younger generation into nation building.
It is the younger generation who are the main victims of this vicious and negative politics. They spend their youth seeing mostly the manifestation of muscle power and crony politics. They also hear nothing but abuse and denigration of leaders by their opponents. Without any alternative in sight, they end up joining the process.
The egos that prevented any understanding in the past are once again threatening our future. With only a few months to go before the election, we now face a stalemate on the nature of the election-time government. We had a solution in the form of the caretaker government for the last four elections. Under it we had four peaceful elections, participated by record number of voters and accepted by our people and the world as being properly conducted and reflecting the general will. Each of those elections, while not giving the voters much of a chance to choose new leaders, definitely served as opportunities of punishing the old ones.
Now the tables have been turned, more precisely overturned by the PM and AL leader. (Please read our response today to the PMO’s rejoinder published in full yesterday). Our story reveals how, in spite of the draft recommendation of the Special Committee to the contrary, the PM insisted on scrapping the caretaker provision and thereby created the impasse which is practically threatening the election process and the democratic edifice today.
The moment for a grand compromise, which can only come from true and visionary leadership, is now. Sheikh Hasina must, as the chief of the party in power, start the process by going back to her original assertion that “only elected people” can form the election time government. This is a principled position and one we can all support. Khaleda Zia, on her part, has already indicated that nomenclature is not important but only that the election-time government must be neutral.
We see significant possibilities of compromise in these core positions of the two leaders. However, we also know that presently the stumbling block is that Sheikh Hasina wants to remain the chief of the election-time government, which the BNP has refused to accept.
This is where the PM needs to compromise. She has won on the point of only elected government forming the election-time government. Now she should compromise on the question of head of that government. Here is where a dialogue should take place, but only if the AL chief agrees.
This is the time to show visionary and courageous leadership, one that endures in the hearts and minds of the people over time and not vanishes as one relinquishes power.

The writer is Editor, The Daily Star.