Culture of Violence in Bangladeshi Politics

In a Daily Star article published Dec 12, 2008, Zafar Sobhan talks about the culture of violence in Bangladeshi politics:

"The recent death of Nurul Islam, president of the Ganatantri Party and nominee of the Awami League-led grand alliance for the upcoming parliamentary election for Noakhali-1, together with his son, both burned to death when their house was set on fire last week, comes as a timely and tragic reminder of all that ails Bangladeshi politics.

Many things ail our political culture from the feudal and inegalitarian make-up of society, to our winner-take-all mind-set that does not permit the opposition space for dissent, to an oppositional culture that prefers to disrupt a sitting government than try to work with it.

But none is so corrosive to the establishment of a functional democracy as our long-standing culture of political violence, and the death of Nurul Islam demonstrates that as hopeful as we all are for good elections on December 29, there is still a long way to go and lots of loose threads to be tied before we can truly believe that democracy is safe in Bangladesh."