We have had and we still have a good number of lasting leaders, leaders who have more lives than cats, whose longevity in politics can put vultures and whales to shame. But were or are those leaders committed? Take for example the leaders like Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury, Korban Ali, Ataur Rahman Khan or Shah Azizur Rahman? Now that they are gone, do you miss them?

Those men were powerful in their days, and they literally made governments, so to speak, evolve around them. Then look how their careers ended in vain. They were mischievous men, fraught with human vices but that was not why they came to their ruinous ends. As a forgiving nation, we were always ready to look the other way. But what took them down were their very own words, which hovered in the air like haunting spirits and came back one day to strike them down.

Despite their many differences, those men had two things in common. One was their lust for power for which they always shifted. The other thing common was a clever man. All of them fell in his hand, and he took them down one by one like the broken menageries from a showcase. Who is that clever man? Why don't you see if you can figure that out on your own?

Let us talk about the living names. Sheikh Hasina once promised to retire by a certain age. She has now changed her mind. The country needs her, what can you say? The sitting Prime Minister has already ruled two and a bit terms, her health rumored to be failing, yet there is no sign that she is ever going to let up. Then a former dictator is coming back all decked up in safari suits and scarves. After nine years of reign and five years of prison, this octogenarian Robert Bruce wants to regain his throne.

Then you have got other long lasting leaders of small caliber. One-man parties, which don't win elections, maneuver in politics like a school of fish freely swimming in the deep waters. Many of these leaders were left-leaning once, but now they use their ideology in the same way a spinster uses old pictures to remind that she was young.

Are you beginning to see what I mean? To sum it up, when leaders want to last long in power, words wobble under the weight of their ambitions. Last word is a measure of character quotient, the integrity of a person who is ready to stand by his words at any cost. But that doesn't hold when the son strikes deal with the alleged killer of his slain father, or the daughter of a fallen leader does not mind working with those who may have played dubious roles in wiping out her entire family.

As a matter of fact, what we see is psychosis with political consequences. Power is the greatest aphrodisiac and elections are mating seasons. Never mind, who said those words, let them stretch your imagination. When one large party consorts with a few small ones, a political coalition is born. That is how politics is an eight-letter word that does all the four-letter things to the country and its people.

So come September, don't be surprised if BNP and Ershad are going to dance cheek with cheek. Don't be surprised if you also see a somersault, a kind of political legerdemain when the caretaker government sits in power. After all, in our part of the world, politics is a long night of drunken spree. Once people come under the influence of power, they don't mind if the music changes or they dance with a monkey.

Theses days, you hear lot of political babbles. CEC, voter list, reforms in the caretaker government, corruption, price hikes, teachers' strike, split in JP, one coalition, another coalition, Citizens' Group, CPD, clean candidates, power shortage, new bridge, old bridge, and the list can go on and on. But if you come to think of it, these are old problems with new labels. These are the varied symptoms of the same disease. Our politics is dirty and our politicians are despicable.

When I was growing up, there was a saying in my village that a man who doesn't keep his words, his mother has two husbands. The words of mouth are linked to a man's honour until our politicians discovered the opposite, that power was more covetable than respect, and learned to lie with a straight face. It is amazing how they boast that there is no last word in politics as if reciting holy verse from the scripture right before undertaking a noble cause.

It is the same inclination that reverberates through the society now. We tell lies to hear lies, which cascades from politics to all walks of life and then throws those lies back into politics. Perhaps the best way to describe our country is to compare it with a steamship stuck in the sand, which revs up its motor only to kick up more sand.

If Ershad ever returns to power, we shall get that sand in our face. It will prove that our politics has come to a stagnant stage, where nothing comes out of nothing except recycling old wines in new bottles. Only good news is that most of our long lasting leaders may not last very long. Because there may not be last word in politics, but nature puts its own limit. There is always the last breath when the time comes.

Now where there is good news, there is bad news as well. It is a custom amongst certain African tribes that whoever catches the last breath will carry the dead person's soul and spirit with him for ever. I am keeping my fingers crossed that when our lasting leaders go one by one, the African custom will not prove right.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.