The mess is of gargantuan proportion and it will take quite an effort to clear it up to bring coherence, order, and civility back again. And at the moment, there is a big show on in the capital to clear up that mess by the same politicians who have created it.

It beats common sense as to why grown up politicians should need a lot of prodding, persuasion, round table, long table, and square table discussions and words of wisdom from the civil society to wake up and realise that the country was on the crossroads of collapse, and that they need to sit for a dialogue.

Don't the politicians have independent mental faculty to do their own analysis and reach a conclusion? Don't they have properly functioning eyes, ears, and gray cells to see, hear, and calculate the outcome of what they have been doing and undoing all the time in the name of serving the people?

Are they imbeciles who need to be told what is good and what is bad for the country? If a rickshaw-puller or a vegetable vendor may talk about the importance of settling the differences so that a free and fair election can be held, why could not the so-called veteran politicians say this long before in a joint communiqué?

Today, the nation remains hostage to the whims of these politicians, who seem to be enjoying every bit of the glare of the sun-gun and media coverage. There is an air of show and pomp in the whole comical episode of dialogue that belies the solemnity it entails. The glitz, the crowd, and the arrival of the stalwarts remind one of the WWF wrestlers entering the arena in the company of overweight supporters.

Frankly speaking, the show surrounding the over-hyped dialogue has been stretched beyond comprehension and tolerance and is generating boredom among the audience. The people have to work from dawn to dusk to earn an honest living. They have to worry about the fire in the kitchen market, another mess created by the politicians.

The tricks of Sircar
Never in the two hundred plus history of parliamentary democracy has any nation been blessed with a speaker of parliament like Mr Jamiruddin Sircar. His tricks and magical acts to keep the opposition outside the edifice called Jatiya Sangsad during the full tenure of the BNP-led government reminds us of the vanishing tricks of magician PC Sarcar. It is only our sheer luck that Jamiruddin Sircar did not learn the trick to vanish the entire parliament building!

Our very own Sircar will go down in history as someone who set inimitable examples as a blatantly partisan person while running the affairs of a democratic institution. He was largely responsible for making the multi-party democratic system look so dismal and useless through misusing his power and position. Our memory fails to recall any other person so partisan to have occupied the supposedly neutral seat of speaker.

For the last five years, Speaker Jamiruddin Sircar has spoken to a half-full house, as the other half always remained empty for many reasons. Either the opposition members stayed out following a walkout after a bitter argument with the speaker on getting the floor, which the latter did not entertain. As a result, we have seen that the opposition members were hardly given the floor to speak out their minds on issues of national importance.

Strangely enough, most of the alliance MPs and cabinet members were also not regular in attending the parliament sessions, which led to quorum crisis on most occasions. This had prompted the prime minister to reprimand the absentee law makers with threats of action. But that hardly worked.

All throughout the five-year tenure, Sircar never made any great effort to hide his sentiments and rock solid determination not to give the floor to the opposition. His deft fingers would switch off the microphone of the opposition members as and when he pleased.

On the very last day of the last session he allowed the ruling alliance members to talk about Rakkhi Bahini, but did not allow the opposition members to discuss contemporary issues like police brutality or Rab.

Jamiruddin Sircar will haunt us in our peaceful sleep for many more years.

Shahnoor Wahid is Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.