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POLITICIANS are said to have an elephant's memory -- unforgetting and unforgiving. And, people's memory is too short like that of a goldfish. The colourful aquatic specimen has a proverbial Alzheimer-like forgetfulness. No sooner had it swum to a point nearby, than it would forget the way back. Well, this may be pretty interesting for a fish watcher but for the victim it is obviously a misery. The same may hold true in human affairs. 

Political leaders' long, rankling memories of each other are too well known to be repeated to bore you with. So, let me confine myself to how short public memory can be, and more to the point, how this is being helped out by most unlikely quarters -- the ruling party. Obviously, the BNP-led alliance wants to get the people to forget their resentment over 92-day long blood-spilling, burning orgies in a ruthless series of oborodh and hartals.  Khaleda Zia's motorcade bashing three times in a row while campaigning for BNP-backed candidates for the DCC polls has given her exactly that handle. She is acquiring an underdog image as her alliance's unrepentant violence ruthlessly played on the people escapes public questioning. Up to peaceful showing of black flags has had its precedents in democracies and thus is acceptable. But to let attacks take place on her motorcade, especially when her party joined an electoral process is being seen as a window of opportunity for normalisation of politics. 

Such a show force, one hopes, should not be replicated; considering it sends across negative signals about the steady progress of the electoral process. On the one hand, ruling party leaders and ministers encouraged the BNP-led alliance to participate in the polls, the government and EC allowed their weighty candidates to throw their hats into the electoral ring and the electoral run up is gathering pace; on the other, there are these avoidable dampeners.

What needs serious reflection is the fact that if the people were allowed to reach their verdict without interference, the outcome would most likely be eloquent, mature and decisive compatible with the aspirations of right thinking people.  

The Dhaka North City Corporation has 23 lakh and the DCC, South has 18 lakh plus voters. The size of the electorate allows for intimate house-to-house campaigning by the candidates. 

From the points of view of the EC, administrations and the security personnel, the whole exercise seems to be highly manageable and easy to monitor. The media would be at hand. Importantly, US, UK, Japan, Germany, Sweden and Canada have evinced interest in sending observer groups as have some international election watch bodies.

In today's watchful world, rigging, especially in such small constituencies, has to be ruled out. But tension-ridden environment may discourage voters to come out and cast their ballot.

One potential downside of multiplicity of candidates with competitive profiles lies in splintered voting. Resultantly, the mayoral winners, in particular, may not be sizably representative of the corporations. The same may happen to the councillors.

Of paramount importance is the fact that Dhaka and Chittagong are the nerve centres of national politics. The way the election goes and the result it produces, one hopes, will be a precursor of participative elections in the country.

The festive atmosphere associated with such polls should be consciously allowed to flourish. To this end, the filing of cases and counter cases between contending parties should come to a stop.

It is worthwhile to note that reportedly, local BNP and its alliance leaders in some northern districts have joined Tablig Jamaat and gone for 40-day chilla (special prayers) to evade arrests. Also at Mithapukur and Pirgachha in Rangpur, a Bangla news report would have us believe, houses of fugitive Jamaati leaders have had portraits of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Sheikh Hasina displayed to ward off police visits.

Strangely, the nationally outrageous Pahela Baishakh sexual assault has been a matter of some wild political speculation, as an offshoot of fertile imagination of some politically-charged minds. A former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University saw in it a deliberate ploy to discourage women voters from casting their ballots. A ruling party top brass while critiquing police lapse, blames it out on  forces arrayed against national independence and our cultural identity.

The writer is Associat Editor, The Daily Star.