Debate on the need for reform can now begin in earnest as the opposition has put its opening cards at least on the table. The public is now in a position to decide for itself whether it considers the opposition demands to be reasonable and where it stands on the issues.

There are still many questions left open of course. The first is how many of the reforms tabled are in practice non-negotiable and how many can be bargained away in the interests of consensus. The second question is whether the government will be inclined to fulfill even the most defensible of the demands, or whether it will refuse to countenance any talk of reform on principle.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let us start at the start.

The first thing to note is that not the entire opposition has united behind the reform agenda. Much has been made of the absence of the CPB, but more significant to me (though hardly unexpected) was the absence of both the Jatiya Party (JP) and Bikalpa Dhara Bangladesh (BDB).

The absence of the JP makes perfect sense. It has not been long since the entire nation witnessed considerable apparent evidence of the pressure that JP head HM Ershad is under from the government, which has 15 cases pending against him. There has been much speculation as to whether the JP would enter into an alliance with the government or the opposition. Now it seems as though the party is slated for a third role.

If the main opposition parties boycott the coming elections, there will need to be a credible opposition for the elections to be considered legitimate, both within the country and internationally. The absence of any credible opposition was one key factor in the illegitimacy of the February 1996 polls in the eyes both of the nation and the international community.

However, if the JP, which garnered some four million votes in the 2001 election and has received as many as sixteen million (1991 elections) does run, then it makes a difference. The effectiveness of an AL-led boycott of the election would be undercut if the JP were to appear on the ballot.

Then comes the question of the BDB. The temptation for a new party hoping to make inroads into the vote-banks of the more established parties must be great.

It is true that the best case scenario the BDB can realistically hope for is that the AL comes to power, which might then precipitate an exodus from the BNP to the BDB and put them in a good position for elections in 2012. Under normal circumstances, it is hard to see how they would not be hurt by the re-election of the BNP-led alliance.

However, if the BDB were to contest the upcoming elections in the absence of the AL, then it could reasonably hope to pick up a fair number of seats and set itself up as a legitimate opposition party.

So far the BDB is keeping its cards close to its chest, and there is no doubt that a final decision on whether to contest the elections will depend largely on which of the AL or the BNP conducts itself with the most credibility in the coming months and the way things look on the day that the government is dissolved.

The next question is what would be the aftermath of an election held without the AL, the 11-party alliance, JSD, and NAP.

Much depends on how the government behaves between now and election day, and how fairly the elections are perceived to be administered. If the election bears the appearance of being above-board and if one or more legitimate opposition parties can be rustled up, then the absent parties will have little that they can credibly complain about.

The opposition is in a bit of a Catch-22 situation. They have an entirely well-founded fear that upcoming elections will be rigged in favour of the BNP and its allies. However, if they choose to not contest the polls, then the government will have no real need to rig them in order to win.

It was the fact that the then government rigged the February 1996 polls that were boycotted by the opposition that was the final nail in its coffin that year. It was the rigging of the election that permitted the opposition to successfully call for the ouster of the 6th parliament. I am not sure if the opposition can count on the BNP and its allies to make the same mistake twice.

Indeed, the opposition game-plan is a little unclear. The best case scenario is that they force through the bulk of their reform agenda, contest the elections, and win a majority. But let us say that they do not manage to accomplish this. Then what?

Do the AL and its allies have the support to render elections held in their absence illegitimate, and do they have the power to render a government so elected ineffective? I am not so sure.

Much of course depends on how the government conducts itself in the run-up to elections and how the elections are themselves administered. The smart move for the government to make would be to accede to a number of the reform demands (many of which are eminently reasonable). This will give them the high moral ground and permit them to make the argument that they have done what they could in order to bring the opposition into the elections.

The opposition would then face pressure both inside the country and from the international community to contest the elections. Fortunately for the opposition, nothing in the record of the alliance government suggests that it is capable of anything remotely as statesmanlike and sophisticated as this.

But this does not answer the question of what the opposition's game-plan actually is in practice. It is possible that the government will respond in the coming months in such a heavy-handed manner that public opinion, both inside the country and out, will swing decisively towards the AL and its allies, and that the government will have no option but to enact the proposed reform agenda in its entirety. But this seems to me to be something of a long-shot and I would be interested to hear the contingency plans in case things pan out differently.

Once again success in politics in Bangladesh seems to depend on which of the main parties can conduct itself with the greater restraint. Whichever party shows the greater accommodation and the greater reasonableness in relation to the proposed reform agenda will emerge strengthened. But I am willing to bet good money that both the government and the opposition will compete with each other only in terms of how intransigent and unreasonable they can be in negotiation. Score this one a likely draw.

Then will come the street agitation. As ever, the government can win this show-down by exercising restraint. But if the past is anything to go by, it will spare no effort in trying to crush any kind of street agitation that it will face. Ironically, this is just about the only thing that could translate into victory for the opposition by turning public opinion decisively against the government.

It will be interesting to see whether either side has learned much from mistakes made in the past. I am not counting on it, and it is the apparent inclination of our political leaders to do precisely the opposite of what they ought to that makes the likely outcome of the upcoming show-down so hard to predict.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.