/ A wise move

The decision not to move forward with a writ petition against 11 political parties and three past elections is a welcome move. It is a clear sign of introspection on the part of the student coordinators that indicates maturity and realisation. It was evident that the petitions had been hastily drafted from their lawyer Ahsanul Karim’s admission that they had meant to drop the names of some of the political parties, which should not have been there in the first place.
It was probably the first time that Abul Hasnat and Sarjis Alam, two key coordinators of the Anti Discrimination Student Movement, which spearheaded the people’s uprising of July and August, realised that the judicial process is not akin to reading out a set of demands from the streets. It is a far more complex exercise that merits tempered deliberation.
One of their petitions sought to have the three past national elections declared illegal. There is no doubt that these elections were rigged and engineered by the ruling Awami League to retain an overwhelming majority and at the same time prop up a puppet opposition in parliament. However, having them declared illegal would also question all that the government has done since 2014, which would in turn raise far more complex legal issues—a subject that the courts would surely have to consider even if the petitioners did not.
The other petition seeking to ban political activities of Awami League and 10 other parties, had included the name of some parties “inadvertently”, as the lawyer admitted, and some had been mentioned by the wrong name. Moving forward with this petition would be like retracing the steps of the previous Awami League regime, which resorted to its obliging courts through proxies. It should be quite obvious from Jamaat-e-Islami’s resurgence on the political scene that banning a party does little to extinguish them in body or spirit. Further, this petition would have forced the courts to decide on a matter that actually belongs in the political realm. A party’s relevance and acceptance among the people can best be judged by the verdict of the people through the ballot.
Whatever the case, the fact that the students have, for now, backtracked from pressing the petitions, indicate that they are not bent on retribution and further that they realise such a move would erode the strength of our democratic polity instead of contributing to it. Let this be a reminder to the young leaders that moving on matters of the state is a lot more complicated and demands thorough contemplation even before the first step.