Summersaults, Contradiction And Confused Populace

The bottom line is that the government is confusing ordinary people with not just what they are saying but also with what they are doing. The government seems busy trying to make everybody happy at the same time, writes Mubin S Khan   WHILE speaking to the press on June 25 , Suranjit Sen Gupta, co- chairman of the special parliamentary committee on amendment to the constitution, observed that a constitutional void was unhealthy for a country— apparently as a justification for moving the bill for constitutional amendment in parliament. A rather amusing observation because, if I remember correctly, just the other day, the leader of the opposition in parliament, Khaleda Zia stirred a storm by saying the country was running devoid of a constitution to which members of the government and the party in power reacted with all their rhetorical wrath. Politics is often dominated by rhetoric and, in our country especially, the rhetoric can over a very short time completely switch sides, without changing so much of an ‘adjective’ in its content. Take the example of the caretaker government issue. In 1996 the Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina, and its allies Jatiya Party and Jamaat-e-Islami claimed that ‘ for a free and fair election a neutral caretaker government was necessary to save democracy, people’s voting right and national economy.’ Khaleda Zia, then the prime minister, ‘rejected the opposition guideline for caretaker government terming it undemocratic, unconstitutional and insulting to people’s verdict.’ Khaleda kept asking the opposition to sit for talks, offered to strengthen the Election Commission by reforming relevant laws, and asked the opposition, repeatedly, to come to parliament and make their observations heard. Hasina refused to go to parliament ‘until and unless the government makes an announcement of its readiness to move a bill on an acceptable caretaker government’. In the most amusing of political rhetoric, according to The Bangladesh Times in 1996 , Khaleda Zia said ‘since her government came to power there had been a number of elections including 16 by-elections.’ ‘These elections were free and fair, even the ruling party candidates were defeated in Dhaka and Chittagong city corporation elections. This highlights the fact that our government believes in free and fair election,’ she had said. Déjà vu indeed! In a world with an eroding value of idealism and fleeting public memory, it is quite understandable that politicians will resort to just about anything to retain, or regain, power. Often, it provides fodder for the round-the-clock media, and healthy amusement to a lot of people otherwise strained for entertainment in a country whose entertainment industry provides very little—in fact, rather ironically, is riddled in politics. In a conservative society where the young are raised to never question the virtues and wisdom of the elderly, I am sure, it is more amusing for the younger generation to watch middle-aged men and women, of the generation of their parents and grandparents, take centre stage and utter gibberish, discard opinions and positions like they discard dirty laundry and quibble like children in a football match gone awry. Ever since the AL-led government came to power two and half years back, political rhetoric has been at one of its finest best in terms of doing summersaults and providing contradictions. To be fair to them, the expansion of the mainstream media may also have increased the attention of such utterances and brought more of them into public domain. With the 30- odd seats in parliament, the opposition seems to find it more airy to stay on the streets, while the parties-in-power- run parliament has been a feast in the exercise of ‘democracy’, with heads of the parliamentary affairs committee and many of the potential minister-rejects more often assuming the roles of pseudo-opposition. One is almost tempted to wonder if the unfulfilled dream of BKSAL would have looked something like this. From the very beginning of this government we have enjoyed many a battle—Suranjit vs. HT Imam (the prime minister’s adviser), Suranjit vs. Shafique Ahmed (the law minister), Tofail Ahmed (a former commerce minister) vs. Abul Hossain (the communications minister), Syed Ashraful Islam (the LGRD minister and AL general secretary) vs. Abdul Jalil (former AL general secretary), the list goes on and on. There have been further battles—AL MPs Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir and Abdul Jalil’s crusade to see the Moeen Uddin-Fakhruddin government brought to book, Alamgir’s crusade against the Anti-Corruption Commission, or the entire government’s crusade against former Grameen Bank managing director Dr Yunus. In all the battles, the divisions that gaped in the beginning and merged at the end provided ample entertainment to news followers. Suranjit no longer boasts the supremacy of the legislative over the judiciary; there are no longer battles between the victims and beneficiaries of the Moeen Uddin-Fakhruddin government, Muhith no longer stands up for Yunus’s innocence while the Rapid Action Battalion, once referred to in parliament by the prime minister ‘as an institution which has tasted blood’ receives an unprecedented level of political and rhetorical support from all quarters of the government. But the lines between amusement and troubling can often get blurry. Take the instance of the amendment to the constitution. The Supreme Court has declared the fifth amendment, the seventh amendment and the thirteenth amendment to the constitution illegal. We have been informed through the media that the constitution is being reprinted at government-owned BG Press and yet, the parliamentary committee for amendment to the constitution went around discussing with various groups amendments to the constitution. The committee members in the midst of their discussions voiced their support for election-time caretaker governments in the future, and yet went completely silent when the prime minister discarded their long list of possible forms of caretaker government, taking refuge in a single portion of a Supreme Court judgement. Amidst all this, Ziaur Rahman retains his signature in the constitution through ‘ Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem’ and HM Ershad through ‘Islam as the state religion’ while the constitution apparently also retains secularism as one of its pillars. At the present moment, it is safe to say that nobody knows exactly what social contract binds together the people of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Contradictions and summersaults have not just remained in the world of rhetoric and polemics, but have also stepped into policies of this government as well, and that is where it gets dangerous. During the much-hailed National Education Policy of 2009 , the committee first gave the impression that the government would finally remove the constitutional anomaly of various streams of education in the country but in the end settled for a more uniform curriculum, also omitting the word ‘secular’ from the policy. In the Women Development Policy 2011 , the government made a long list of proposals for the emancipation of women in the country and then conveniently refrained from guaranteeing equal inheritance to women, the issue that had made the policy imminent in the first place. The bottom line is that the government is confusing ordinary people with not just what they are saying but also with what they are doing. The government seems busy trying to make everybody happy at the same time. A look at the proposed budget for the fiscal 2011-2012 aptly illustrates this point, where there appears to be huge allocations for almost every citizen and every sector—from social safety nets to provisions for turning black money white— without hurting anyone’s sensitivity. In the end we have a humongous deficit of Tk 45 ,204 crore. Reaching the two-and-a-half year mark in tenure is an important landmark for any elected government in Bangladesh. It is often when people decide, and begin to voice their impressions of the government in power. Sitting on such an important juncture, the AL-led government should better decide whose government it exactly is, rather than try to win over everyone. It should finally try and answer questions which they have so far either left ambiguous or bombed confusion, with contradictory statements. Does the prime minister think ‘Moeen Uddin- Fakhruddin’ government was a ‘ crocodile’—if we infer from her most recent comments—or does she think, like her telecommunications minister Raziuddin Ahmed Razu, that Moeen U Ahmed is one of the finest Bangladeshi generals of the last forty years? Does she intend to ever rein in the Rapid Action Battalion as she promised in parliament or does she now believe that it has never committed extrajudicial killings like a host of her cabinet members? Will the finance minister please tell us whether we are pursuing free-market economic policies or socialist economic policies? And most importantly, will the prime minister and the government please tell us whether we live in a secular country or an Islamic one? If the government fails to answer these questions, they will not only ever win over the ones that did not vote for them but may also lose the ones who voted them to power.

India Needs To Change Attitude In Dealing With Bangladesh

ONE-way traffic in India- Bangladesh relations becomes apparent once again if we take into consideration the news that Bangladeshi citizens are not allowed to enter India through the Botuli check post in Sylhet, although Indian citizens are allowed to make the trip the other way round. According to a report published in New Age on Monday, the Indian authorities have stopped issuing visas to Bangladeshis since November 2003 at the Botuli check post in Moulvibazar, reactivated by both countries in 2001 , after a 26- year gap.    While the issue of a single check post may appear minor in the greater scheme of things, it nonetheless feeds on the growing perception, at least amongst a significant section of the population in the country, that India-Bangladesh relations are affected by a lopsided foreign policy, where Bangladesh end up giving a lot more concessions to its powerful neighbours. At a time when both governments are vocal about improving relations between the two countries, such news can feed into abovementioned perceptions. The Bangladeshi government has already initiated the process of allowing India transit to its north- eastern states, and Botuli certainly does set a bad example in this regard. It does raise the question as to why, when the Bangladesh government has extended a hand despite significant resistance from many quarters in the country, the Indian government is still inclined to keeping its doors closed. More simply put, if ‘friendly relations’ is the word that is being bandied around, why should there be double standards, albeit in one check post or many? It has been apparent since the Awami League-led alliance came to power that the government has among its priority agendas to improve ties with India. In this regard, the government has initiated transit facilities, have cracked down on Indian fugitives seeking refuge in Bangladesh and also opened doors to a number of trade and investment opportunities. However, India’s response to Bangladesh’s concerns has so far been lukewarm. Killing of unarmed Bangladeshi citizens along India-Bangladesh borders continue to take place despite repeated assurance from the top brasses of the Indian state. The Indian government is also yet to address the issue of enclaves between the two countries, the un- demarcated borders or for that matter, conclusively address the issue of water share of the river Teesta. Botuli could very well be an administrative oversight or a strategic concern of the Indian authorities, but it is nonetheless consistent with the Indian government’s attitude in dealing with the people of Bangladesh. If the governments of both countries are indeed interested in developing lasting ties between the peoples and governments of the two countries, then a change in attitude—whether it concerns large issues such as Teesta or small ones like Botuli—is in order.

National Interest : Vis - ä - Vis Gas Deal

Patriotism means love of and devotion to one’s country; and a patriot vigorously supports and defends its interests with dedication. It is universally recognised, and there are no two opinions about the truism that martyrs for the cause of the motherland like the Bangla Bhasha martyrs and the three million martyrs during the Bangladesh Liberation War were the patriots of the highest order as they had sacrificed their lives for their homeland. And nobody will ever question the patriotism of Sher-e- Bangla A K Fazlul Huq, Awami League’s founder-President Moulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman et al.    The question of ‘patriotism’ has become relevant as the Prime Minister herself bragged about possessing this virtue in reference to the deal signed on June 16 by her government with Texas-based ConocoPhillips for exploring surveys in offshore blocks 10 and 11 , in line with a model PSC-2008 formulated during the last caretaker government. “While we’ re trying to march ahead, these groups keep opposing us,” Sheikh Hasina said, in an oblique reference to the protest programmes carried out by the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports (NCPOGMRPP).    Hasina also mentioned that during her previous term, from 1996-2001 , she had turned down the proposal to sell gas. She said that in 2001 polls, her party could not come to power, as it did not want to sell gas to some foreign companies. “I used to consider national interest above everything else,” Hasina said adding, “Who is a better patriot and protector of the country’s interests?” It has to be admitted that in 2001 she did a true patriot’s job. But what about the present one?    A prominent English daily had contacted in December, 2010 foreign minister Dipu Moni, and the energy adviser Chowdhury. It had sought official responses on the disclosure of the deal. “They had avoided questions; afterwards they stopped receiving calls. They did not respond to text messages either”, the daily noted.    Surprisisngly enough, NCPOGMRPP’s specific criticisms of the terms of the contract are not answered. The unresponded questions are: why has the leasing company been awarded the right to sell off 80 per cent of the gas extracted? Why will the multinational companies will sell gas to us at very high prices? Why will gas prices double from earlier prices, $2.92 , or Tk 210 for a million cubic feet to $5-6 or Tk 420 , which will push up the prices of daily necessities and services further?    In September 2009 police assaulted and wounded varsity professor Anu Mahmud and the others who were proceeding towards Petrobangla. It was ludicrous to see the farce of seeking apology to Mahmud and other badly injured persons including female participants in the protest rally. The hidden cause of this drama could be that the government has something to hide about the details of the deal. This year the victim is eminent columnist, anthropologist and scholar Ms. Rahnuma Ahmed who was injured during the clash between police and protesters on 14 June 2011. The nation was aghast and shuddered to watch her blood-drenched head and face on most of the satellite TV channels and a small number of newspapers.    Among the masses, unquestionably, the consciousness and feeling regarding the national interest and resources run deep; and this sentiment should be respected by any government if it has the least concern for this resource-poor country and its resources. It is advisable that instead of enthusiastically gratifying international oil companies and concurring with their exploitative terms and conditions that harm the nation economically, the incumbents should weigh up this disadvantaged nation’s essential and indispensable requirement. If the government leaders fail to be farsighted then the posterity will not forgive them.    While there is life, there is hope: dum spiro spero. Every individual, in adversity, keeps on hoping against hope. The country’s non- renewable natural resources, such as gas, oil, coal and other minerals, are extremely precious; in fact priceless. So, no government, even with three- fourths majority in parliament, has the right to sell at a lower price the exhaustible resource that can never be regenerated at an enormous cost in future. We keep our fingers crossed to see the proof of patriotism.

Patriotism And Deal With ConocoPhillips

THE question that the prime minister posed on Saturday—i.e. ‘ who is more patriotic and looks after the interest of the country than I?’—is pleasing to the ears and even encouraging. After all, the person elected by the people to run the country needs to be a patriot beyond question. While we do not question an elected government’s patriotism, we expect the government to prove its claim by its deeds, not by empty rhetoric. However, there are reasons to believe that the question is not merely aimed at vouchsafing the patriotism of the prime minister or, for that matter, the government that she heads. Came as did in the wake of the call for a dawn-to-dusk general strike by the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports on July 3 in protest against the production sharing contract signed between the Awami League-Jatiya Party and the US oil giant ConocoPhillips on June 16 , the question seems to be an indirect way of undermining the committee’s patriotism. The citizens’ forum has provided critical analysis of economic and energy policies of successive governments since its inception in the late-1990 s and persisted with the demand that the people’s ownership should be established on the country’s natural resources. It has never opposed exploration and extraction of the country’s hydrocarbon resources, e.g. coal, gas, oil, and their utilisation in its economic development; its prime demand has been that these resources should be explored and extracted under the supervision of the state-run exploration entity BAPEX and used to the benefit of the people at large. In doing so, its leaders and activists, supporters and sympathisers have time and again proved their readiness to make the ultimate sacrifice. Three persons were killed when the law enforcers opened fire on a largely peaceful demonstration in August 2006 against the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance government’s plan to engage Asia Energy in open-pit coalmining at Phulbari in Dinajpur. If these are not patriotic demands and deeds, one wonders what is. The prime minister may recall the movement that the committee spearheaded then; after all, she, then the leader of the opposition in parliament, went all the way to Phulbari after the government had shelved the plan in the face of the popular uprising and warned the then incumbents of dire consequences if the agreement they had signed with the protesters were not implemented. One needs to keep in mind that patriotism does not lie in episodic public assertions but has to be proved round the clock, round the year through deeds. Regrettably, however, the successive governments have pursued neo-liberal policies and unbridled market economy and commercialised services that are supposed to be rendered by the state, e.g. education and health care, at the behest of the imperialist West; these in no way protect the people’s interest or are any measure of patriotism. Hydrocarbon exploration and extraction agreements have been signed with international oil companies, deals that have allegedly lined up the pockets of a handful of bureaucrats and businesspeople and been used by the ruling quarters as a diplomatic tool to appease the global and regional big powers with a view to perpetuating control over state power locally. Moreover, the ruling quarters have maintained secrecy about the contents of these agreements. Besides, whenever questions and allegations have been raised about these agreements, those in power more often than not resorted to repressive means, thereby only underlining the legitimacy of these questions and allegations. The incumbents have not been any exception either. They have also employed the law enforcers to oppress not only their political rivals but also the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports. They have also kept the content of its agreement with ConocoPhillips under the wraps, just as their predecessors did other such agreements. What makes the national committee’s hartal stand out is the fact that these are meant to neither retain nor return to state power, unlike similar programmes called by the political parties like the Awami League or the BNP. Thus, the general strike is anything but ‘nonsense’, as the finance minister, according to a report published in New Age on Sunday, termed it on Saturday.

Has Bangladesh's Elite Police Force Gone Too Far?

On March 27 , Bangladeshi doctors amputated the leg of Limon Hossain, a 16- year-old student, four days after he was shot during a raid by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Bangladesh's elite security force. Almost everyday since, Hossain's name has made headlines in Bangladesh, becoming a symbol of accusations that the governments paramilitary force acts as judge, jury and executioner in its official mission to clean up this south Asian nation of crime and corruption. "RAB is misusing their power," Hossain says. " They are killing people." On March 23 , Hossain says he was taking his family's calf back home from the fields to his village of Jhalakati in southwest Bangladesh. Out of nowhere, he says, members of RAB arrived on motorbikes. One grabbed Hossain's collar and accused him of being a criminal. Another pulled out a gun and put it against Hossain' s head. Weeping, the boy fell to the ground, pleading for his life. After dragging him to another spot in the village, a RAB member pulled out a revolver and shot him point blank in his left leg. Days later, doctors had cut it off to save his life.RAB, of course, has a very different story. According to RAB's Commander Mohammad Sohail, the village of Jhalakati is the hub of a powerful syndicate headed by Morshed Jamaddar. Everyone there, says Sohail, is in the pocket of Morshed's gang. He says law enforcement agencies have filed 19 cases against Jamaddar, including rape, murder and abduction, and that the Morshed gang has bought "everyone except RAB" — including some local politicians. Sohail says RAB, headquartered in Dhaka, had heard information that Jamaddar was in the village on March 27 , and dispatched a team to capture him. When RAB approached, gang members shot at them, and RAB returned fire. Hossain, Sohail says, was a Morshed lackey caught in the crossfire. "The other story," he says, "is made up by bad people." RAB filed cases against Hossain for illegal arms possession, obstructing law enforcement agents and attempted murder the same day as the shooting.

Dressed in all-black uniforms with black bandanas and wraparound sunglasses, RAB cuts an imposing presence on the streets of Bangladesh. The group was founded in 2004 during a time of "huge deterioration of law and order in the country," according to Sohail. Drug lords, extremists and arms traffickers worked with impunity. Brad Adams, the Asia director of Human Rights Watch, says when RAB was created, "rich people implicated in serious crime could buy their way out." By selecting the best from the military and police and loaning them to RAB in two- year rotations, the force was supposed to be above corruption and put an end to the crime wave. By that measure, even the groups harshest critics — and there are many outside of Bangladesh — admit it has been successful. Since 2004 , the force of about 8 ,500 has captured more than 95 ,000 criminals and confiscated 10 , 000 illegal firearms, 5 ,000 bombs and grenades and 400 kilos of heroin, according to RAB statistics. The problems with RAB began, says Adams, when its members began taking justice into their own hands. "They started targeting criminals, because they had no faith in the criminal justice system," he says. RAB admits that their team members have killed some 600 criminals in firefights since 2004 , though Odhikhar, a Bangladeshi human rights group, says the real number is over 730. Human rights organizations say many of those deaths have been intentional extrajudicial killings, sometimes targeting the wrong individual, and that RAB employs violent methods in questioning their suspects. In May, Human Rights Watch released a report cataloging some of RAB's alleged torture incidents and killings, including a case in which they say RAB mistakenly murdered a man because he had the same nickname as a criminal. According to the report, no one has ever been punished in connection to any of the 600- plus deaths. Sohail says Human Rights Watch didn't approach RAB for information and relied on family members of those who had been shot for information. The result, he says, is that the report is "a one-sided complaint book of the criminals and their families." And despite human rights groups' objections, RAB still enjoys wide grassroots support. In a 2009 cable released by Wikileaks, the U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh called RAB the country's "most respected police unit." Interviews in Bangladesh bear this out. In a typical comment, Anthony Sarker, a hotel manager, said "RAB are real heroes to the poor. They are like black pirates." He not only acknowledged that RAB oversteps its mandate; he said it was necessary. "The normal judicial processes dont work, so sometimes its best to control a criminal RAB's way," said Sarker. This kind of attitude may be changing. Recently, Bangladeshi newspapers have been more openly critical of RAB's alleged extra-judicial killings. Adams says that for the first time, significant segments of public opinion are being critical of RAB's ethics. How the upcoming Hossain court cases play out in public will be a telling barometer of RAB's support. Recovering at a hospital in Dhaka, Hossain and his family fear the lives that await them back in their village. Hossain's mother has sued six members of RAB, but there has yet to be a hearing on their case. "I don' t think there's any hope," says Tofazzal Hossain, Limon's father. He says RAB has powerful allies who have physically threatened his family. "We sued them," he says, "because we didn't want any another boy like Limon to lose his leg. We didn't want any more mothers to cry or fathers to live in agony."