Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman appealed: "When the militants are threatening to destroy different national institutions we all should come forward to save them." (Statesmanship Score: B+)

Law Minister Moudud Ahmed commented that AL's rejection of the dialogue deepened the public suspicion over the party's hand in the recent string of bombings. (Statesmanship Score: D -). What a prosaic and self-serving statement!

Although Mr. Bhuiyan was courteous in his comments, his assertion that AL, instead of solving the militancy issue, wants to exploit it as a political weapon, is vacuous. How would AL help solve the militancy problem by participating in a dialogue? All available evidence indicates that AL had all along been the target of violent attack and the ruling alliance, not even once, had to face what AL had been subjected to.

Mr. Bhuiyan's contention about the AL leader's refusal to receive the PM's letter of invitation for dialogue as "unfortunate and discourteous," although apposite, is somewhat self-serving as well. The discourtesy is nothing compared to the denigration she was subjected to over the last four years. The opposition leader (a former PM herself) is no less a statesman and celebrity than the current PM by any measure of civilized norm.

In his recent commentary: "The world has changed, our leaders have not," Mr. Mahfuz Anam has stated: "From the outset the same old vicious campaign was let loose against the opposition that they were behind the terror attacks. In fact, save for one occasion on November 30, 2005, all other public utterances by the PM on this topic left no doubt on any reader's or listener's mind that she held the AL responsible for all the terrorist attacks."

The sarcasm is that these asinine accusations continued unabated even in the face of confessions of guilt by arrested JMB members. How could the PM conceive that the former PM and the current opposition leader of the country would involve in al-Qaeda type atrocious activities against her own people?

Mr. Anam added: "They also have damaged the functioning of democracy by misusing the power and influence of their office in denigrating the opposition in this manner." He contended that the government's lukewarm action and investigations may have intensified and culminated in the current fervour of the terrorists' eruptions.

The observation that the ruling alliance "damaged the functioning of democracy" by denigrating the opposition through malicious propaganda and misuse of official power will probably be recorded as the hallmark of alliance government's five years term of office.

After being PM for the second time and opposition leader once in-between, how could the PM not realize that the effectiveness of the party system in parliament rests largely on the rapport between the government and the opposition parties? In general, the opposition, among a multitude of roles, is expected to:

• Contribute to the formulation of policy and legislation through constructive criticism (BNP ignored and often slammed opposition views);
• Oppose government proposals it considers unacceptable; initiate amendments to government sponsored bills (AL was consistently smeared and shut out whenever government policies were criticized or objected to);
• Lay down its own policies in order to advance its chances of winning the next general election (BNP made sure that opposition initiated no such moves);
• Promote lively and reasoned debate projecting citizens' preferences, values, and ideologies into policy, lawmaking, and in the budgetary process (BNP took control of everything as its sole legislative prerogatives);<\li>

• Present a viable alternative to the incumbent government by devising alternative ideas, principles and policies for the country (BNP was afraid about this and denigrated the AL as the country's enemy);

The role of opposition in any democracy is to check and prod, but eventually to replace the ruling party. Because electoral standing is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of government legitimacy, voices of the opposition act as deterrence against disparaging the ongoing test of legitimacy which transpires through the go-between of the legislature and the legislative opposition.

A dynamic opposition in Parliament is the principal fortification against the lure to force majeure and the making of a bureaucratic realm. The people voice their frustrations and aspirations through the loyal and responsible opposition as well as the ruling party ministers and lawmakers. There is virtually no substitute for the "checks and balances" which are brought into play in the representative and watchdog functions acted upon by members of Parliament.

The PM and her elected party functionaries must do some soul-searching to assess the extent they have neglected their obligations to develop a healthy understanding with the opposition. They trampled the opposition's right to perform their constitutional role at every opportunity. Did the PM intervene?

Why would she? She failed to realize that after becoming the PM, she has ascended to the position of the country's leader for the next five years while remaining her party's leader as well. By all measure, she failed miserably to fulfill the compulsion required for both roles. She probably thought by marginalizing the opposition, her party would get a free ride to run the country as they please. Has that actually happened?

The result is politicization, corruption, absence of rule of law, killing of journalists, violence on minorities, selective use of the rule of law (pardoning convicted murders), World Bank admonishment, black money accumulation, massive bank fraud and loan defaults, mushroom growth of fundamentalist school of extremists in the name of Islamic education, and finally her own party's increasing disarray with the possibility of exploding into splinter groups.

Such a mismanagement of titanic proportion of the country's affairs could not have happened so fast and so all encompassing had the opposition been allowed to have a strong voice in the parliament and the oversight of "checks and balances."

In competitive multi-party politics, the elected majority party forms the government and seeks to enact into law various policies and programmes oftentimes consistent with their election pledges. It is imperative that the opposition recognizes and respects the authority of the elected government. Such norms form the basis for adherence to the values of tolerance, cooperation and compromise. No democracy can flourish without consensus building which requires compromise and tolerance. As Mahatma Gandhi famously argued, "Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit." The BNP infringed on the constitutional rights of the opposition at whim and showed no semblance of tolerance of the voices of the opposition and reason.

A vocal and effective opposition is the nucleus of any democracy. It means that all diverse elements in a political equation -- however deep their differences -- share the fundamental values of freedom of speech, the rule of law, and equal protection under the law. The opposition is essentially a "government-in-waiting." For a culture of democracy to take hold, opposition parties must have the confidence that the political system will guarantee their right to organize, speak, and dissent from and criticize the ruling party. They must be assured that in due course, they will have a chance on an equal footing to engage in political campaign, win election, and rule the country.

The country's current predicament is multi-faceted and too deeply ingrained to be resolved by a cinema verite dialogue among diametrically dissenting, intolerant, and abrasive political elements.

It has now proven beyond any iota of doubt that to lead a resource-starved, poverty-ridden country of 140 million people, it takes more than being a housewife, a mother, wife of a general, a country's first lady, member of parliament, once opposition leader and two times Prime Minister. It takes more than being a student politician, a member of parliament, one time Prime Minister, and two times opposition leader, and daughter of a Prime Minister.

The missing element is knowledge and the willingness to learn. The country needs a radical leader to innovate radical ideas. Please make your way out and bring relief to the people and the country.

After finishing this write-up, I requested a colleague to give me his comments. Two hours later he asked me: "Why don't you write this in Bengali for a much bigger exposure?"

I replied: "Those who cannot read English do not denigrate democratic values."

He then asked: "Do you really think politicians and bureaucrats would read your article, and listen to your suggestions?"

I said: "Most likely no, because if they see the title, they would know it is about them."

He then quipped: "Why are you wasting your time, then?"

I replied: "People write about safe sex not for the HIV/AIDS-infected people, but for those who are yet to be infected."

Dr. Abdullah Dewan is Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan State University.