The reform proposals have been introduced nearly half a year back and presented before the Parliament weeks ago, but are yet to become the pivotal focus of the nation's attention. However, let us not forget that only months from now, a Caretaker Government shall have to be formed for holding the parliamentary election and in the meantime, the politicians have to respond to the needs for narrowing down their differences on the said proposals. In order to maintain the continuance of constitutional and democratic processes, they have to demonstrate a genuine will to engage in a consultative process for reaching compromise on election reforms demands.

One may well argue that the process is already on. The government has already announced its readiness to accept the establishment of a committee for discussing the election reform proposals. Accordingly, the BNP Secretary General has written to his Awami League counterpart inviting the name of Alliance representatives to be included in the proposed committee. According to Section 266 of the Rules of Procedure of the National Parliament, a Special Committee for conducting such discussion could be formed by the parliament itself.

Alternatively, a political level committee outside the periphery of the parliament could also be constituted to perform the same function. Whatever might be the form of the said committee, we need to understand that it would make no substantive headway unless the two major political parties of the country follow the basic grammar of consultations.

The needs for consultation generally presuppose differences of opinions. The process of consultation aims at minimizing or eliminating those differences. According to legal and diplomatic literature, consultation must be conducted in "good faith" meaning it must be participated with open-mind, logical arguments and rationality. Good faith negates unshakable or rigid position by any party to the consultation and requires an attitude for reaching, as far as possible, a reasonable compromise on the question of differences. Therefore, insisting on acceptance by one party to all proposals made by the other cannot be said to be reflective of good faith. At the same time, outright rejection to any of the proposals before the commencement of actual consultation also indicates an inherent lack of good faith towards the entire process.

Apart from good faith, success of consultation depends on other factors as well. Among them, foremost is the art of developing efficient and specific agenda. Consultation therefore, needs to be preceded by a series of informal discussions between the representatives of two parties. To give it an institutional shape, a liaison committee (remember the success of such committee during the anti-Ershad regime) comprising more acceptable leaders of the major parties could be formed which might effectively narrow down the differences of two major parties on various aspects of reform proposals.

The liaison committee could thus precisely define the areas of actual dispute and accordingly formulate agendas for consultation. This task, in the context of election reform proposals, could also be facilitated by the involvement of a third party which, following the idea of Dr. Muhammad Yunus, would comprise eminent and respected citizens of the country. By placing our faith in the caretaker government system and demonstrating our general acceptance of a good number of members of former caretaker governments, people of this country have already implied their readiness to accept such interventions.

A valid question at this point might be whether the consultation would necessarily succeed in reaching accord on election reform measures. If we recapitulate the reform proposals of the 14 Party Alliance, we find that some of them are potentially acceptable by all parties while others have lesser acceptability and a few are unnecessary as they already exist in the Representation of People Order of 1972. It may be expected that the political parties would agree on at least those segments of proposals that concern clean candidature and election-day arrangements. The difficult task for the consultation team, however, would be to arrive at compromise on the proposals regarding institutions, in particular, the President and the Caretaker Government and restructuring their powers and functions during election periods.

The other institution that the reform proposals are concerned with is the Election Commission (EC). Reaching consensus on reforms of EC might be less complicated due to a number of factors. Reform in this regard would not entail constitutional changes and as it happens, the needs for reforming EC was by and large accepted by all the major parties on various occasions.

Now, what is needed is a change in attitude amongst the major political parties. Exercise of good will and good faith by them during consultation could make major inroads in resolving the dispute concerning reform proposals of the 14 Party Alliance. It would indeed be honourable on the part of political parties to resolve these disputes voluntarily rather than under pressure of mid ranking officers of foreign governments working in diplomatic missions in Bangladesh.

Our political leaders should also realize that conflict over petty matters like who will formally propose the formation of the committee in the parliament will only beef up tensions concerning the next election. In my understanding, no sensible citizen would enjoy that kind of a tension and neither should the politicians.

Dr. Asif Nazrul is a writer and Professor of Law, University of Dhaka.