Two-thirds majority in the parliament has given the alliance government a unique opportunity to amend the constitution where necessary to make it more pliable and effective. This was not possible for the last AL government because AL was holding barely a marginal majority in the last parliament. Thus frequent complaints by Khaleda Zia as to why reforms were not considered by AL during its regime are not at all appropriate.

At this fag end of the 4-party alliance tenure, it sounds puzzling as to why the prime minister is boasting so much about her government and trying to dictate terms to the opposition 14-party alliance who are fully aware of her achievements as well as failures during the last 58 months. Would it not be foolish to assume that all wisdom lies with the 4-party alliance and the rest are stupid enough to believe that she has been able to fulfil the commitments she made, and that only a minor part of her commitments remains to be implemented?

Even if we accept that the government has been able to perform some major development works, how can we ignore the hard facts of unprecedented price hike of essential items (mainly because of government's faith in so called trader-friendly philosophy) resulting in complete domination by trade syndicates, rather high inflationary pressure, unabated corruption (with non-functional ACC), inefficient bureaucracy (mainly because of extraordinary politicisation), increasing police atrocities, miserable failure in separating judiciary from executive, and failure to appoint ombudsman? And what about the problem of unemployment? Many complain that it is extremely difficult to get job without graft.

Thus poor people are badly affected. If development means only suffering for them, how can they appreciate such development? The clappings she gets are mostly from the hired crowd and the party activists. Very few common people (non-party) attend political party meetings these days.

Thus it is hard to reject allegation of apprehending election engineering or rigging. In Magura election (during her first regime), it was alleged that Hindu voters were not permitted to vote freely. Thus there was no fair and free election. Such election resulted in the creation of non-party caretaker government.

What we saw and heard about Dhaka-10 by-election under this government compels us to conclude that it is indeed difficult to hold free and fair election even under a caretaker government if it can be influenced by BNP or for that matter any other party in power.

The "incompetent and biased" chief election commissioner has not yet been able to produce an acceptable voter list despite an expenditure of Tk 97 crores. In fact the CEC has already made himself controversial due to his peculiar handling of the voter list. If he really had such sense of dignity as high as expected from a judge of the Supreme Court he would have resigned at the quickest possible opportunity. Contrary to such expectation he has been able to create three posts of election commissioners to establish himself firmly.

Even though outside observers agree to the need for reforms of electoral roll, Election Commission, caretaker government, the BNP chairperson says that AL's proposal for reforms are nothing short of obstructing the progress of democracy in Bangladesh. BNP's claim for introducing multi-party democracy appears meaningless when we see that even the party itself is not run democratically. Maintaining of Hawa Bhaban office indicates that the party is run by the choosen few and all powers lies with the chairperson.

In a parliamentary democracy, it is most unusual if the largest opposition boycotts a national election. In this case, as we see, the opposition is not asking for the moon. Its proposals aim at reforming the Election Commission (long overdue) and the caretaker government.

The AL struggled hard to include the provision for caretaker government in the constitution in 1996 for free and fair holding of national elections. As long as Election Commission works as a functioning division in the Prime Minister's Office it cannot be independent. Its secretariat must be removed from the administrative control of the PMO. It must be given financial independence. To make the commission really effective, there should be a special unit to prevent the candidates from using black money and muscle. Giving of power to the commission to adjudicate should also be considered so that it may penalise instantly violations in the course of election.

At this critical juncture it would be rather wrong to assume that 4-party alliance would be able to hand over power to the caretaker government under Justice Hasan who would hold election on the basis of the current voter list (which allegedly includes more than 10 million fake voters) under the present CEC (who already has established himself as incompetent and biased). Instead of adopting Machiavellian technique to fool the opposition, BNP must realise the importance of reaching an understanding on reforming the CEC and the caretaker government, if necessary through mediation of a third party.

The US government, it appears, is showing great interest in Bangladesh election. The US ambassador has already had discussion with major parties about dialogue on reform of the EC and the CTG. She has volunteered for mediation between AL and BNP, and it is understood that both the parties are receptive to the offer for mediation.

Only five weeks are left for the ruling 4-party alliance to hand over power to the caretaker government. Suddenly the secretary general of BNP had to go to Singapore for medical checkup. We do not know as to whether he would be able to start dialogue soon. Meanwhile, the 14-party alliance is going ahead with its program for making caretaker government (if at all set up under Justice Hasan) non-functional. In this crisis hour, let us hope that patriotic leaders like Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia would carefully judge the situation to refrain from taking measures to push the country to a disastrous situation.

A B M S Zahur is a retired Joint Secretary.