The origin of rivalry
The rivalry started from the top with Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina vying with each other for political supremacy. The general election victory of Khaleda Zia in 1991, was perhaps too bitter a pill for Sheikh Hasina to swallow. She being quite adept in the art of agitational politics, enforced a whopping 173 days of hartal during that 5-year term of BNP. The introduction of the concept of non-party and neutral Caretaker Government was the main demand of the opposition parties led by the Awami League. Khaleda Zia's government was forced to concede the demand by the dissolution of Jatiyo Sangsad, but not before completing her term. Then she arranged a fresh countrywide General Election, (which was boycotted by the opposition) that resulted in a pyrrhic victory for BNP. But it was unnecessarily rigged by overenthusiastic BNP men earning a bad name for itself. That, however, allowed BNP to make necessary constitutional amendment for the non-party caretaker interim government in between two general elections. Hasina's party resorted to another stratagem by staging a partial bureaucratic revolt through the so-called 'Janatar Mancha', engineered by a number of partisan Awami-leaning top bureaucrats led by Dr. Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, who was later rewarded with a ministerial post in her cabinet when she came to power in 1996.

Politicisation of bureaucracy
Ominously, that was the beginning of politicisation of bureaucracy which set a very bad precedence for BNP to follow. Sheikh Hasina's government by the end of the term placed a number of its bureaucratic supporters in key positions at all levels believably in order to manipulate the 2001 General Election results. However, that ploy was off-set by Justice Latifur Rahman, the Chief-Advisor of the caretaker government of 2001.

So when BNP came to power with a massive mandate in 2001, unfortunately, it too followed suit with a vengeance. What was a trickle during Hasina's rule has now become a flood in the current term of BNP. To the detriment of our overall national interest, not only bureaucracy but also other tiers of government including higher judiciary, the election commision and BPSC have allegedly been infiltrated by BNP sympathisers. By no stretch of imagination this can be viewed as a healthy trend either for democracy or for the nation. Both parties are equally to blame for gross abuse of power.

Other major damaging effects
Apart from politicisation of bureaucracy, other equally damaging fallouts from the BNP-AL conflict can be identified as follows: a. Intrusion of 'big money' into national politics; b. Rise of 'mastanocracy' in politics; c. Ill-effects of boycot game in the Jatiyo Sangshad; d. Contribution of both towards the rise of Jamaat-i-Islami; e. Creation of extensive division along party-lines among citizens and so on.

a. Intrusion of 'big money': Probably the most potent factor for polluting our democratic politics is the intrusion of 'big money' or 'black money' into our national politics. With covert or overt patronage from both the major parties 'big money' holders made their entry into our politics by getting nominations from both the major parties initially in small numbers in 1996 General Elections. But in 2001 General Elections that small number had become very big -- our neo-millionaires outnumbered the non-millionaire genuine politicians from both the parties. The intrusion of this nouveau riche class as MPs has made a significant change in our political culture. There is no denying the fact their entry has more or less coincided with the steep rise in our corruption graph. Since 2000, Transparency International has crowned us to be the most corrupt for the fifth consecutive year. What a disgraceful fall for a proud nation which earned its independence through 9-month long freedom struggle costing millions of lives and thousands of rape victims! It is mainly because of this greedy class of money-makers that the high prices of goods and services once they rise do not come down. General masses are virtual hostages in their hands.

b. Rise of 'mastanocracy': The rise of 'godfather' culture during Sheikh Hasina's rule with such high-profile exponents as Joinal Hazari of Feni, Shamim Osman of Narayanganj, Haji Selim of Lalbag, Dhaka -- to name only a few -- and all of them sitting MPs had introduced a vicious element of political terrorism in society. The original godfathers are gone some into exile abroad, some in to oblivion, but in their place have sprung up hundreds of similar kinds unfortunately from among BNP ranks. The advent of RAB has stopped a number of mastans in their tracks, many of them having been eliminated in so-called crossfire. These terrorist elements, if we can go by our past electioneering records, are due to play a major role in the next General Elections. We have to keep our fingers crossed.

c. Parliament boycot game: Some patriotic observers question the use of democratic general elections spending hundreds of crores of taka after every five years if the Jatiyo Sangshad is boycotted for months together by the opposition. Whatever be the reasons for staying away from Parliament, it appears the boycotting MPs are not answerable to their constituents. The depressing picture that emerges from 'Prothom Alo' report published on October 26, 2005 was indeed alarming. According to this report: In the current 8th parliament, the Awami League has staged walkouts 49 times in four years, whereas BNP had done so 54 times in five years of the 7th parliament. BNP, by contrast, remained absent from JS for 149 out of 382 working days. In the 8th parliament out of 297 working days in four years, AL abstained for 211 days. And Sheikh Hasina has attended for only 22 days in four years, whereas Khaleda Zia did so for 47 days only in five years. Such a dismal picture of boycot obviously speaks very ill of our parliamentary democracy which has been reduced to a virtual farce.

People in general would like to know from both the top leaders and from both the major parties: in whose interest this has been done? For whose interest hundreds of crores of taka of poor tax-payers' money have been spent just to hold parliamentary elections? And in whose interest similar colossal amount of money had been and is still being spent to maintain 300-seat parliament with all the perks and privileges plus duty-free cars, free air and land tickets not only for MPs (boycot or no boycot) but also for scores of ministers in a top-heavy cabinet?

d. Contribution in the rise of Jamaat: The rise of Jamaat-i-Islami as a political party could not have been possible without implicit or explicit support from both the major parties. For short or long term electoral gains, imaginary or real, both the parties in their respective periods of rule have courted the favour of Jamaat which had been the most hated party for its dirty unrepentant role of abject collaboration with the killer Pakistani occupation army during our 9-month long Liberation War in 1971. It has found itself in a position of strength now mainly because of bankrupt policies of both BNP and Awami League.

Division among citizens: This is also an incontrovertible fact that mainly because of schism between these two parties the once solidly unified nation in the pre-and post-Liberation period seems to have been divided along major party lines. This is certainly not desirable for the people with genuine patriotic feelings. This is surely not the nation that millions of our liberation martyrs visualised or desired.

Conclusion
The confrontational and divisive politics of the major parties has certainly dragged the nation into a quagmire of uncertainty and unease. This has been very graphically illustrated and described in a recent satellite TV channel interview by Mahfuz Anam, Editor of The Daily Star as two cars on collision course with all headlights on in a dark highway with both drivers not prepared to dim their lights to avoid the inevitable disaster. Indeed such a disaster looms large for the whole nation if sanity and good sense do not prevail over our top leadership. May Allah grant them timely wisdom and sagacity to spare the nation further man-made calamity.

Anwarul Haque is an academic.