The move to have Sayeed Iskandar elevated to the vice-presidency of the party was, as we will agree with Osman Farruk, not a good one. And it was not because it came at a time when the call for reforms within political parties has been getting a fairly justifiable degree of credibility.

One may not agree with what the caretaker administration has lately been doing in terms of dealing with Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia. But one will likely understand that the concerns the government has recently demonstrated about the necessity of internal party reforms are those that have found a responsive chord among some very large sections of people in the country.

Let there be no mistake here: unless the nation's political parties are willing to introduce democratic patterns of behaviour within their own long corridors, it will be difficult for us to believe that politics in the future will come encompassed in the traditions of democracy we have regularly observed being pursued elsewhere.

When you consider the damage that has been done to political pluralism through a pursuit of hereditary politics, you will perhaps be able to comprehend better the essence of the ailments we suffer from here in Bangladesh.

To be sure, you can point the finger for the inauguration of such a regressive tradition at places like Sri Lanka and India, where the Bandaranaikes and the Nehru-Gandhis first stumbled cheerfully into the discovery that they could take charge of their nations without in any way causing any scratches on the rubric of democracy.

History has demonstrated amply the truth that dynasties begin on a cheerful, often wholesome note; but all too often they decline into a state of inevitable mediocrity. In these past many years, in Bangladesh, it has been a clear state of the mediocre, which has characterized, and left maimed, our notions of democratic governance.

The Awami League and the BNP are, of course, the leading players here. But do not forget that there are all the others, those in the minor league, who have proved equally adept in promoting this culture of dynastic democracy within the parameters of their politics.

ASM Abdur Rab of the Jatiyo Samajtantrik Dal once made sure that his wife was around to lend credence to his party. Anwar Hossain Manju, who has, at least for now, opted out of politics, saw his wife get elected to the Jatiyo Sangsad along with him. And for quite a number of years, Oli Ahmed, he of the Liberal Democratic Party and once of the BNP, and his wife simultaneously served as members of Parliament.

The difficulty with dynastic politics is that it effectively shuts out some rather capable individuals from staking their claims on the parties they serve. A very powerful reason behind the rapid decline of General Ershad's Jatiyo Party has necessarily had to do with the way he originally envisaged the future of the organization.

His wife Roushan has, despite a few squalls, remained a powerful figure in the party. And, of course, his brother GM Quader, clearly a well-meaning and respected politician, has had his own stormy ride, being a significant leader of the party. One of Ershad's sisters was around as well.

Add to that the brief, riotous role Bidisha played in the JP, at one point almost making it appear that GM Quader would give up his parliamentary seat in order for her to acquire it for herself. When you consider these realities, you perhaps can read into the causes behind the JP's inability to be taken seriously by the country.

You could say much the same about Bikalpadhara. It was immaterial that Badruddoza Chowdhury was the leading light in the party. What caused worries was the very public presence of his child, Mahi Chowdhury, within the organization and outside it. When the impression is one of a father-son team exercising the greatest influence in a political organization, it is not likely that the organization will find acceptability across the spectrum.

Speaking of fathers and sons, a prime reason behind the predicament the BNP is in today is the cavalier disdain with which Naser Rahman, child of Saifur Rahman, tackled an issue as grave and as pregnant with purposefulness as politics.

The preponderance of families in political parties is generally a spur to stagnation. You might suggest that stagnation is not what one spots in the Awami League. Perhaps not, but the intellectual dynamism that once characterized the party in the old days, with men such as Bangabandhu, Tajuddin Ahmed and Syed Nazrul Islam defining and even re-inventing it enough for it to reshape national history, becomes conspicuous by its absence in our times.

In much of the present generation of Awami League leadership, the vibrancy that one would have thought would emanate from within it has not been forthcoming. Abul Hasnat Abdullah, Sheikh Helal, et al, have not quite convinced the country that their performance in Parliament has added substance to the democratic spirit. But, again, there are the exceptions to the rule. Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim is a refreshingly different proposition altogether.

A pretty remarkable degree of maturity has by and large characterized Selim's politics, which is again a pointer to the thought that hereditary politics may not always be debilitating for a society.

Now, when you consider the roles the sons of the late M. Mansur Ali have played in national politics over the last decade and a half, it is especially Mohammad Selim who shines through. And yet it is an incontrovertible fact that he fell from grace in the Awami League at the 2001 general elections.

The loss was not just the party's. It was the country's as well, for in Dr. Selim's politics a very admirable admixture of wisdom and politesse has been a defining feature. You could entertain similar sentiments about Abul Hasan Chowdhury, though there is hardly any way in which you could compartmentalize him in the hereditary politics category, save only to suggest that he is the child of a respected former president.

More importantly, Chowdhury served the Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina creditably as minister of state for foreign affairs, though instances aplenty happen to be around of the regularity with which he was undercut by Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad.

It was a mistake for the Awami League to show the door to Chowdhury. It was so because Abul Hasan Chowdhury's exit was clearly symptomatic of a certain slicing away of intellectual content in the party.

Dynastic politics does not have to be a symbol of negativism. Hereditary politics cannot always be all bad. But questions about the negative and the bad arise when clearly there is a propensity on the part of the nation's leading political players to promote their clans, without having them test their abilities in the rough and dizzying world of politics.

Tony Benn did not promote Hilary Benn. The Papandreous in Greece stayed removed from any practice of political nepotism. Shinzo Abe did not become prime minister of Japan because he happened to be the son of Shintaro Abe. Perhaps these are reasons why we might do a bit of rethinking about the course politics should be taking in our particular ambience?

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.