The history of the formation of political alliances in our part of the world goes back a long way. In much the same manner, the dissolution or break-up of alliances is part of the country's political tradition. One is reminded here of the Democratic Action Committee (DAC) which came into existence toward the end of the regime of Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan as a platform for the articulation of opposition demands for political reforms in late 1968.
Ayub Khan was a desperate man at that point of time, given that his regime, which had just observed what was touted as a decade of reforms, suddenly found itself buffeted by fierce resistance in both East and West Pakistan. It was to the DAC that he turned when he decided to eat humble pie and invite the opposition to a round table conference in Rawalpindi. The deliberations, when eventually the regime and the opposition sat down to the negotiations, did not go anywhere much.
By the second week of March 1969, the centre could not hold. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, newly freed from the Agartala Conspiracy Case, was indignant that the DAC had downplayed his Six Points. He decided to take the Awami League out of the alliance. And let it also not be forgotten that on the periphery of the round table conference, Moulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, both of whom had rejected Ayub's invitation to join the RTC, shaped their own tenuous alliance. It came to nothing.
The DAC was, however, not the first alliance of opposition political leaders in 1960s' Pakistan. In 1962, a few months after the withdrawal of martial law by the Ayub Khan regime and the promulgation of a new constitution based on a system touted as Basic Democracy, a number of opposition figures led by former prime minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy formed the National Democratic Front.
The NDF tottered along until December 1963, when Suhrawardy passed away in Beirut. In January 1964, the young and rising Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Suhrawardy's disciple, pulled the Awami League out of the NDF, restoring the individual character of the party. The NDF lost meaning without the Awami League. It simply fizzled out. In independent Bangladesh, the earliest of political alliances was forged by the Awami League, Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) and National Awami Party led by Prof. Muzaffar Ahmed in 1973.
There was little question that the CPB and NAP were the junior partners in the alliance, but they did end up influencing the Awami League in the creation of a national platform comprising a single political party, christened the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (Baksal) in January 1975. The alliance came to naught seven months later through the deep-rooted conspiracy which led to the violent coup d'etat against the government and the assassination of the Father of the Nation.
The AL, CPB and NAP have remained political allies, despite the occasional hiccups, but they were not to restore the old unity bonds in subsequent times. Besides, the political winds were not to prove propitious for the CPB, public support for which has been on the decline, and the NAP, which did not move beyond the persona of its leader Muzaffar Ahmed.
In post-1975 Bangladesh, politics took a new shape in 1978 when the opposition, with the Awami League playing the dominant role, forged the Ganotantrik Oikyo Jote (Democratic United Front) to electorally challenge General Ziaur Rahman as he prepared to consolidate his hold on the presidency through seeking a popular mandate.
The GOJ nominated General Ataul Gani Osmany, who had served as commander-in-chief of the Mukti Bahini during the War of Liberation in 1971, as a minister in Bangabandhu's cabinet and then, curiously enough, as defence advisor to the usurper Khondokar Moshtaq Ahmed following the coup of August 1975, as its presidential nominee. Zia, who had served under Osmany in the war, easily beat back the latter's challenge at the election in June 1978. As for the GOJ, it died a natural death.
The formation of the 15-party alliance with Sheikh Hasina at its head and the 7-party combine under the leadership of Khaleda Zia was hugely instrumental in energising public sentiment against the regime. In the end, the movement against the regime managed to force General Ershad and his government from power in December 1990.The history of alliance politics in Bangladesh thus has moved on at critical points in time.
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