Even so marginal a politician as our one-time unelected president needs to be safely confined to the dust-bin of history in the current clean up. No tears will be shed in this column (nor much elsewhere in the country, one rather suspects), the octogenarian leader had long overstayed his welcome and any deal, which ensures his retirement from politics surely has the blessings of the nation.

In fact, I personally would be perfectly happy if other similar deals could be struck to persuade the other various hacks and has-beens who continue to suck up the political oxygen to accept voluntary retirement. Don't get me wrong. I would be as delighted as the next man to see some of these people called to account for their misdeeds in office and breaking bricks for their rest of their lives -- and it is certainly no more than many of them deserve.

Nevertheless, from a purely practical point of view, if we can get them out of politics I think the nation can let its thirst for vengeance go unquenched without suffering unduly.

The main thing is to see that they are beyond rehabilitation. The danger in cutting deals to permit them to weasel out of prison sentences is that there remains a real chance that if they are let off the hook that they might be back.

But assuming that it is possible to ensure that there are no more second acts for those who have abused the public trust and enriched themselves at the public trough, one could be content to merely see such individuals banished from public life.

Either way, it now seems clearer than ever that the oligopoly of the existing political parties is what the current administration is intent on breaking up. At one point it seemed as though the existing political parties might be resurrected under new leadership, but this was always an iffy proposition, mainly for the reason that most who had been identified as the "new" leadership were not new and were as corrupt and compromised as the old leadership. The batch of "new" leaders are still in the picture, but my guess is that at the end of the day they will also be happy enough to retire from politics "voluntarily" in order to stay out of prison.

So what next?

Well, the current crop of political parties will still exist. However, it remains to be seen whether their misdeeds of the past fifteen years (and before) coupled with the current action that has discredited them in the public eye, has contaminated their brand identity beyond which it is in anyone's interest to try to resurrect them.

The parties will almost certainly continue to exist in some form or other, but whether they will continue to be the titanic figures they have been in the nation's polity thus far or whether reformers will choose to rally under a new banner, remains to be seen.

It should be noted at this point that there have been a number of reports of a third party being bruited under the leadership of a rather obscure one-time senior BNP leader which has so far attracted a rag-tag group of similarly obscure middle-ranking politicians. On the whole, this new formation does not seem much of a candidate to emerge as the new vital centre of Bangladeshi politics. Though one never knows.

However, would it be too alarmist to point out that there amidst all the high-profile arrest and incarceration and retirement of senior AL, BNP, and JP leaders, that there remains in Bangladesh a fourth large national party that appears to have been left entirely out of the calculations.

I refer, of course, to the Jamaat-e-Islam, a party that has been conspicuously absent from the headlines these past six months. Conventional wisdom suggests that the reason for this is that the Jamaat is less corrupt than the other parties. Perhaps so. But if it is Jamaat corruption you are looking for, please permit me to point you in the direction of Pirojpur and Rajshahi, for starters.

Nor does the Jamaat lag when it comes to common or garden thuggery and hooliganism. Jamaat and Shibir cadres control their territories with a famously iron hand and their connections to organised crime and extortion in the localities they run is well established. Indeed, the brutality and viciousness of Shibir cadres is second to none in the country.

This is not even to mention the party's cast-iron connections to militants and radicals.

From time immemorial, non-elected regimes in the Muslim world have chosen to target secular opposition only.

Time and again, it is the Islamists who are left untouched and use the opportunity to strengthen and consolidate

Time and again it is the Islamists, who, by remaining untouched, rise to the fore-front of the democratic opposition.

Time and again, it is they, promising social justice and equality and freedom from corruption, who step authoritatively into the void created by non-democratic rule.

This could be the moment that the Islamists have been waiting for these past thirty-six years. They have never risen to 10% in the polls, but with their secular rivals discredited and their leadership and party apparatus more or less unscathed, they could emerge as serious players in the next elections.

Right now, these are tough times for the interim government. No question. The gargantuan and unprecedented nature of the project at hand means that there will be mistakes and miscalculations. That is to be expected.

But it is worth bearing in mind that some miscalculations could have massive unexpected consequences, and while the government cannot be expected to get everything right, if they get the question of Islamism wrong, then nothing else they accomplish will be worth anything.

If the main political parties are decimated and the Islamists are left intact then there will be a massive power vacuum that they will sweep in to fill. This is elementary history. It has happened again and again the length and breadth of the Muslim world, and, more than anything else, we need to be careful that it does not happen here.

I have seen no evidence that the current government is even in the slightest bit aware let alone concerned about this phenomenon.

More important than the institutional reforms, more important than the corruption cases, more important than the political reforms -- the most crucial thing is to ensure that no vacuum is created that will create an opening to shift the country decisively to the right.

Because once we move in that direction, it is a long, difficult path back. Bangladesh will be changed radically, and irrevocably, for the worse. There is no more important concern today than to ensure that this does not happen.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.