A sense of unease

The political parters have sized upon the government's diminishing credibility.'We're in grave economic peril.'It's time for democratic unity.His party and the Jamaat-e-Islami,an Islamist party that has existed for decades in direct antagonism to the secular-left Awami League,took the unprecedentd step of calling for even Hasina's release from prison.They bridle at caretaker government's undemocratic attempts to reform democracy from the top down.It took hundred of years to establish fair democratic norms there.We also need time.The sense of solidarity that these parties now share files in the face of their past.since the restoration of electoral politics in the 1990s,Zia's BNP and Hasina's AL alternated divisive spells in power,terms that were marked by bitter partisanship,rampant corruption and little to no sense of national consensus.We need to reduce the cost of electoral defeat.Used to be winner-take-all with the loser in the streets.To that end,the government has attempted to engage politic parties in an ongoing series of dialogues focused on constitutional reform,pivotal in the advisers' estimation to strengthening democratic governance.But the main parties,including the BNP and Jamaat,have so far refuse to join in the discussion-though with Hasina's recent release,the AL has warmed to government overtures.Many Bangladeshis suspect that Moeen and the adviser are happy to press ahead with both local and national eletions,crafting a government of national unity with handpicked candidates and without the backing of any of the major parties.If Hasina and Zia are convicted of crimes before December,they will be disqualified from competing in th polls.this,reckons one Western diplomat,may finally break the parties amd lead to a series of significant defections.But another scenario is also possible:that the growing outrage among the political parties and their cadres may spill onto the streets in the form of mass people power protests.If they want to make trouble,let them-but that belies very real concerns on the part of the government of the threat of wide-spread dissent.Across the walls of Dhaka University's sprawling campus are murals of activists and revolutionaries breaking their chains and fighting the state.Military rule may be encoded in Bangladesh's DNA,but so too is resistance to it.The government has made no promises about when it will lift the emergency.Shying away from democratic commitments,Moeen is far more eager to talk about building effective leadership in Bangladesh and educating its vast,illiterate masses-as he himself put it -so that they don't keep on cutting off their own feet.Such a tone is fitting for a man who styles himself the redeemer of his country.You cna judge the people of a nation by the type of laeder they select,he concludes.Most Bangladeshis are wondering when they'll really get that chance.