It was 1996. It was the end of the five year term of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in power. The opposition demanded that state authority be handed over to a caretaker government so that we could have a fair parliamentary election. But BNP avoided that and held an election without the participation of major political parties. They did not put enough effort to guarantee a fair election and ensure the participation of other political parties.

In hindsight, it is clear that at the time the BNP leadership was fearful that if the election was fair they would lose. They were apprehensive that people would not re-elect many of their party candidates to Jatiyo Songsod (parliament). BNP arranged an election which turned out to be one of the mort derisory elections in our democratic history.

As expected, BNP won most ridings to have an absolute majority in Jatiyo Songsod. But it could not hold on to its victory because of a vociferous mass movement. It had to dissolve Jatiyo Songsod and relinquish power to a caretaker government to arrange a fair election. The election was arranged and eventually BNP lost, confirming their worst nightmare of not getting re-elected.

BNP thought that it was the end of their world. But they were wrong. They regained power in the following general election. Many people in Awami League (AL) camp believe that the election was manipulated to unseat them. While there might have been some systematic manipulations, but there was no substantive evidence to prove that the election was rigged. AL failed to present convincing evidences to prove that their victory was denied through manipulation.

It is a typical tendency of our political parties to search out conspiracy theories to hold other responsible for their defeat. When they rule they feel that they do everything right and their critics are wrong or just unnecessarily hostile. They never evaluate their performance and they hate criticism.

The only time they are happy is when they find opportunities to somehow hang on to power. If it goes otherwise, they are so upset that they begin to believe that the whole country conspired to dethrone them. They forget how some of their ministers and party leaders patronized goons, grabbed public money, and worked against people's expectations. They are always scared to face people in a fair election.

They try to find ways to manipulate elections. They plant cronies in key positions of the bureaucracy so that they can control the administration during elections. They line up loyal judges as the future chief justices (CJs) in order to have a loyalist head the caretaker government. They also appoint party loyalists as the election commissioners with a view to concocting election results. They forget that they have a responsibility not only to make the country economically self-reliant but also safeguard and strengthen its democratic system.

There has been a rumour that the ruling coalition has been doing everything to swing the upcoming general election. Those who go along with the rumour argue that the bureaucracy has already been restructured, the election commission and judiciary -- two other important institutions of the electoral process -- have been corrupted through the employment of ruling party flunkies.

Under the existing arrangement, the head of the caretaker government is supposed to be a former chief justice. From the perspective of the ruling coalition, it is important to have their man as the head of the caretaker government. They were really conscious to make it happen. As part of their plan, they promoted their favourite judges to supreme judicial positions.

The rumour-mongers also tell a similar story about the election commission. They note that the commission is manned by the flunkies of the ruling coalition. The commission has failed the rudimentary job of the election -- preparing a genuine voter list. A strong and independent election commission is a prerequisite for a fair election. They ask, is our election commission independent?

All these allegations seem to bear some element of truth. The future head of the caretaker government would be someone who was promoted by the ruling coalition. The recent performance of the election commission in voter listing has shown how partisan it is. The recent developments in Bongobhobon further fuel the rumour. Everything tends to bring back the memory of 1996. If the things go the way they are going at the moment, we will see the repetition of a recent history. We will see the reproduction of election 1996 in 2007.

Now the question remains: why an evil history repeats itself every now and then? I have already identified the actors who recreate such histories. I will now explore why they are successful in doing so. In fact, they exploit the systemic vulnerabilities of our democracy which allows certain actors to recreate evil histories.

More than fifteen years have elapsed since we regained our democracy, but we faltered in building the democratic institutions necessary to strengthen and safeguard democracy. We failed to build an independent election commission and judiciary. The ruling party and the prime minister's office can exercise a lot of control over them. Until this control is eliminated we will always have a risk to have CECs and CJs coming from the ranks of ruling party flunkies. A few people can utilize a leaky system for public good, but these days such people have minimal chance of being appointed in these positions.

As a conscious citizen I ask myself how long we should wait to prevent the leaks in our democratic system. How long will we allow evil actors to recreate evil histories? When will we act for public good?

I want you to do the same.

AJM Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan is a faculty at the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Dhaka, now pursuing a Ph.D. in Communications at Simon Fraser University in Canada.