The word 'reform' has a universal manifestation of 'something better' than the present. Curiously enough some highly acclaimed historical personalities had been associated with this radical term. The most noted among them had been the great German Reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546). He was ordained a priest in 1507 and later became Professor of Theology at University of Wittenberg and until 1517 was an orthodox Roman Catholic. His first idea of revolt occurred when he saw indulgences being sold, a practice which he openly condemned. For this he was excommunicated. Yet he made a memorable defence of his stance. He then separated himself from the Roman Catholics and began to preach the Reformed Religion, his doctrine being formulated in the confession of Augsburg. He lived to see the principles of the reformation widely established.

In essence, reformation wouldn't ordinarily convey any proposition for disintegration of a compact entity. But, Martin Luther's historic venture was indeed the first major dent to pave way to a new branch of Christianity, namely, Protestantism in 16th Century. After much controversy, the reformers (followers of Martin Luther) boldly propounded the principles of the new doctrine, and the struggle for religious supremacy grew bitter. But the reformation principles spread, and ultimately a great part of Germany as well as Switzerland, the low countries, Scandinavia, England, and Scotland were won over to the new faith.

So, from our first experience, a historic one, we know that 'reform' can be a highly potent agent for creating division among people of the same belief. Rightly or wrongly it happened not only with the believers of Christianity but also with other religions and their followers.

But systems obtaining for a certain period of time are most likely to outlive their effectiveness in the changed situations. It can be true in all the conceivable fields of human lives, be it religious, social, political, economic or technological. The area of technology and the massive advances it has made so far or the further strides ahead it is poised to make, is likely to rock all other areas. Consequently, each of those segments shall have to sustain rapid change as would suit human needs and that of time. However, religion or religious faith, being a very sensitive area, any proposal for radical reform will have to be cautiously pursued. Meantime, we have substantial evidence on record corroborating changes or reforms in some of the fundamental religious obligations hitherto in vogue. At the instance and initiative of a group of highly noted authority on Islamic laws and rules, some of the controversial provisions in marital laws have now been amended to suit the present time.

There have been too a good number of instances where political reforms based on mutually contradictory ideologies took place in the preceding century. We can cite the examples of post World War II eastern European countries under the hegemony of the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. In very recent times, all the eastern European countries broke through the socialistic pattern of governments based on communistic principles and voluntarily opted for democracy of the western world. Here, Poland took the lead. Even USSR of the Leninist regime disintegrated into several independent states to rim on democratic lines. The age-old confederation of Yugoslavia also broke into a number of independent states. The Berlin wall making a forced division between the people of Germany crumbled to reunite them. These have indeed been historical episodes conveying massive national reforms, apparently for the greater benefit of the people.

In the Indian sub-continent, even during British days and after, we have had instances of activities related to socio-political reforms. Among them we can cite the crusade launched by none other than Mahatma Gandhi against mal-treatment and social discrimination of the 'low caste' Hindus known as 'Dalits' by the 'high caste' Hindus. His movement assumed tremendous momentum during his life time and contributed substantially to reforming the attitude of the Hindu hardliners.

The context of reform we are talking about in Bangladesh has been the abhorring mischiefs of large scale corruption born of unending greed at the political level. For five successive years this poor country had been rated as the number one corrupt country of the world. The root of such corrupt practices would owe its origin to institutional lapses and handicaps. For instance our election commission till mid nineties used to be ruled and controlled by the government in existence till election. Constitutionally, this body would be independent but in actual practice its secretariate till date is accountable to the secretariate of the Prime Minister.

In order to contain undue intervention and underhand manipulations of the election results an innovative mechanism in the name of caretaker government was invoked in 1996. This could be taken for a sort of 'reform' in the system of election, the first of its kind.

The last retiring Chief Justice would form the caretaker government as the Chief Adviser. Here too, and as was evident this time, the 4-party alliance government was alleged to have taken to a queer plan to ensure that one of its beneficiaries would take his place as the head of the care-taker government. The situation turned out to be all the more complex due to the role played by the President. Uncertainties further compounded.

Parallel to these awful events the role of the election commission was also under introspective scrutiny. The CEC MA Aziz and his two aids /ECS kept on muddling the situation to a point of no return. Things were almost going out of control. Yet the belated wisdom displayed by the President by way of relinquishing the other position of care-taker government head and appointing a new such government with Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed as its head saved the situation the reform proposition of the entire administrative machinery took a newer dimension with the clamping of emergency rule.

The massive exposure of individual corruption at the highest level of the two contesting major political parties and the interventional programme initiated by the present caretaker government shall have more than justified the urgent need for reform and reshuffle of the Anti-Corruption Commission. The present re-organised body of ACC at long last, is taking itself to the right and desired direction at salvaging the emaciated national image from further deterioration. Here, the import of reform in its true sense appears to have been on track.

Meantime, the election commission has also been reorganised and revitalised to hold national election in 18 months or by the end of 2008. The separation process of the judiciary from the executive, has been augmented and hopefully by the end of the current year the nation will have a totally independent judiciary to be proud of.

Though it sounds a bit funny and somewhat preposterous to receive close attention, the clarion call for reform of the political parties, the two major ones in particular, comes now from the present government. It insists that the big parties should take up radical reform programmes so as to enable emergence of new, honest and duly tested leadership. It also tacitly discourages family-based leadership. New rules are also stated to have been in the offing to forbid/prohibit student and labour politics as part of the mainstream political parties. Due stress will be reportedly given on the students to pursue their studies in right earnest at the first instance.

The political parties will have to obtain registration from the Election Commission to contest in any election, national or local. The major political parties, namely Awami League and the BNP, have, by and large, been in agreement with the reform proposition. They are awaiting the formal withdrawal of restriction on in-house politics to thrush out concrete proposals in this regard. The major shift may be in a provision to disqualify one person from holding the position of prime minister and that of the party chairman/president concurrently. Let us hope for the best.

Kazi Alauddin Ahmed is a management consultant.