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THE Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the country’s largest opposition establishment, has recently overhauled its important committees, which drew a bit of surprise and huge public attention. More importantly, the institutional refitting that suddenly fell from the top of the party surely cautioned those who hastily diagnosed that the BNP was in a terminal decline. To go for a fixed poll that the BNP would surely lose or to continue anti-government street rallies is at the heart of the opposition parties’ dilemma in making their realistic choices. But the BNP and its allies could trace such predicaments in South Asian political history as well.

The majority of British Indian politicians skillfully waded through two opposing drifts: (a) institutional politics through the limited legislative privileges and (b) the extra-constitutional knocks that, from time to time, went over the heads of the quasi-parliamentary bodies that the British Raj incrementally offered to the colonised Indians. The old National Congress Party’s (Congress) mantra of ‘locomotive politics’ was, for a time, to forsake the colonial apparatus for thrusting enormous protest rallies and then again, returning to the legislative floors for firing their political volleys at the Raj. Except for the historically known anti-British non-co-operators, the Indian politicians shrewdly used those colonial assemblies for whatever political worth they carried. And they gained a range of parliamentary experiences for their future post-colonial leadership. Gazing at our past, Muslim empowerment in pre-1947 united Bengal went through institutional development after the Morley-Minto Reforms (1909) granted opportunities to elect more Muslim representatives to the legislative councils through the controversial separate electorate. But Muslim politics in British India did not evolve into stable parties until the 1940s, when the refurbished Muslim League led by M A Jinnah came to the forefront. Two examples of the Muslim-braced political agitations were the Khilafat and non-co-operation protests of the 1920s and the Pakistan movements of the 1940s.

Neither the BNP nor its cohorts have any visible standing in the national parliament at this moment. Steady street campaigns are too occasional now. But even a dozen or more BNP members or their allies in parliament could have boosted the opposition on the legislative floor. They could have drawn their grievances more dramatically to the parliamentary sessions; they could distribute a measure of patronage to their constituents and expose the government’s systemic failures that clouded the country’s horizon. A pompous executive could dwarf the legislature at any given time, as we know. Then the bristling lawmakers from the opposition benches could still shake the authorities with their thundering discourses, investigative questions, embarrassing adjournment motions, and periodic walkouts in raucous protests, which usually make headlines in the press. Without the opposition’s accents, the parliament deliberations have been dull in recent years. The supporters as well as the antagonists of the regime feel disenfranchised under such a lacklustre parliament.

The BNP has not yet suffered an ‘electoral extinction’ — a redeeming political capital for the party. When the leaders-in-office move the ‘goal posts’ of the voting grounds, when the election commission is not even-handed, and when the ruling party’s abettors stuff the ballot boxes in connivance with the local officials, the dubious polls lose their validity even though the dwellers of power could still call it a win and callously lead the government. It was a precarious absurdity when the current regime called the scandalous voting last January a ‘victory’ for itself. The opposition outfits, on the other end, are also in a defiant predicament: can they continue to shun elections? The BNP must prudently plan what it will do in the next election, or if there is an earlier interim vote to pause the existing authority, paralysed by the tsunami of allegations, international sanctions, disconcerting diplomatic pulls, and other upsetting spasms that the government has experienced since the last election. A hopeful sign — domestic and international support for a free and fair election in Bangladesh — is sustaining.

Now the time has come for the BNP to reset its paradigm. A bare-bone estimate — the ruling AL and the BNP still maintain an electoral equilibrium, which would at least return a respectable number of parliamentary seats to the BNP and its allies if they missed the legislative majority, but that would be enough for a sizeable constitutional opposition in the parliament. Legislative floors, even the circumscribed ones, are still among the best public pedestals for the opposition to validate its steadfastness against an unresponsive leadership. With another election boycott, the BNP may remain indefinitely out of the national parliament, just keeping its nose above water through senile grumbles and occasional street movements and media appearances. More seriously, the BNP might lose its centrality as the opposition party as well. It cannot indefinitely survive only by invoking the foreboding of a one-sided election, the horrendous pain already inflicted by the ruling party, a multitude of gripes, and just cultivating the diplomatic blessings of sympathetic foreign powers.

The opposition leaders are yet to realise that the geopolitics of political protests have changed over the years in Bangladesh since we experienced massive and relentless hartals in the 1950s and 1960s. Dhaka is a much larger metropolis now, and its swarming political activists, along with their student associates, no longer habitually confine themselves to their campuses and in their residential halls and hostels. Colossal traffic jams are getting worse by the day. The protesters cannot effortlessly march in the streets or take a bus or rickshaw ride to go to public meetings and other political events from a distance. And it is even more difficult to safely return from political rallies without harassment by police or by the partisan assailants. The day labourers, rickshaw pullers, the self-employed and small businesspeople, the essential service providers, and the lower echelon of civil servants are usually less than excited about prolonged hartals. It is indeed a generational challenge in agitational politics that the BNP-led opposition must deftly manage and credibly diversify its political feats!

And yet, the opposition, of all different shades, could still express themselves over social media, talk shows, YouTube, Facebook, and e-mails, to name certain internet options where the BNP and its allies are more visible compared to other spheres of political ambiance. Bangladesh is still an intensely politicised country; it has not yet changed in substance, although politics is shaping according to the newfangled social trends and the growing technologies of expressing personal and political views. But continued hartal is now the awfully shrinking power base of the politicians. Politics is all about sending messages and how one frames them. As the cliché goes, the BNP needs innovative messaging tactics.

So far, the BNP and its allies could have more vehemently forewarned the people about the economic gusts that the country confronts at the moment: the rapidly depleting foreign currency reserve, the tottering commercial banks, skyrocketing inflation, widespread unemployment, and the diverse economic woes draining the growing middle class and poor folks. The government now faces the most humiliating sanctions against the bureaucrats as well as the politicians — the acknowledged pillars of her administration. Both in the domestic and diplomatic spheres, the AL regime’s monumental confrontations give the hint of an agonising noose around the neck. At such surreal hours, people no longer trust their leaders’ charisma, patriotic rhetoric, historical accomplishments, or ideological prerogatives, as the accredited grammar of politics tells us. A populist backlash against the regime is yet to come. But the tectonic gravity of politics in Bangladesh may suddenly toss so much that it could tear up the country’s future. Now is the time for the ruling AL and the BNP-led opposition to open their dialogue for a peaceful resolution of these acrimonious issues.

Historical and contemporary evidence of the quintessential resilience of identity, political beliefs, and their committed supporters abounds. The British Labour Party’s out-of-power isolation stretches close to prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure as the head of the Awami League government since 2008. The British Conservative Party leaders conceded the overwhelming victory of the Labour Party well ahead of their election. The Indian Congress Party apprehended a near-annihilation in the country’s political map, but in the most recent Indian election, that party upheld that its death was grossly exaggerated. Out in the cold for long, the British Labour Party’s Think Tank was alive and kept on adjusting its narrative to match the changing patterns of British and global politics. Can the Bangladeshi opposition claim such a creative survival tactic while it is out of power? One Bangladeshi exception to this partisan dynamism was, no doubt, the East Pakistan Muslim League, once the dominant party of Pakistan’s eastern province, which suffered a virtual disappearance after the 1954 electoral defeat. But, for a historical record, the ML did not rig the 1954 election to cling to power, and Nurul Amin, the defeated chief minister, transferred power, peacefully and graciously, to the United Front coalition — the winners of that vote.

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M Rashiduzzaman, a retired academic, occasionally writes on Bangladesh politics, Muslim identity and an assortment of historical and cultural issues.