badh bhangar awaaj recent posts http://www.somewhereinblog.net http://www.somewhereinblog.net/config_bangla.htm copyright 2006 somewhere in... Mir Ashfaquzzaman

Old habits die hard, so they say. Look at our government, political leaders and civil society stalwarts, you will know why. On December 20, the Indian television channel CNN-IBN ran a story titled ‘6-member team out to kill ex-Bangladesh PM Hasina’. The interim government of Fakhruddin Ahmed was quick to respond and decided to beef up security for the Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina. Three days letter, the Rapid Action Battalion recovered three improvised hand grenades from a village in Comilla an hour after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson, Khaleda Zia, addressed an election rally four kilometres away. The government was again quick to respond. They arrested two suspected operatives of the banned Islamist organisation Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh. (A couple of days later, seven more members of Jamaatul Mujahideen were arrested in Gaibandha.)
So far so good. But soon things started getting downhill. Hasina accused Khaleda of making attempts to ‘keep off the December 29 polls’. And the rambling and ranting began. The stalwarts of the so-called civilised threw in their two pence worth. The conspiracy theorists went on an overdrive. The interim government, almost predictably, fanned the fire, with one of its advisers trying to downplay the perceived threat on the lives of the two top leaders of the country. The police chief went one step further. ‘Threats were issued through leaflets and CDs…I do not think these have got any strong base… I do not find anything authentic in this regard,’ he said.
Authentic or not, a threat on the life of one or the other prime minister is serious business and certainly not a topic for banality. Unfortunately, seriousness does seem missing and banality too strong to overlook. Like it or not, the two ladies have come to be the symbol of the country’s political process and have been its prime driving force for many years now. Sometimes, it seems from the uttering of the two former prime ministers that even they themselves do not appreciate that.
Rivalry is not necessarily a bad thing but there is something pathological, as opposed to logical, about the rivalry between the two top leaders of the country. It has become an old habit of sort for them, an old habit that refuses to die but needs to die. ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28889146 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28889146 2008-12-28 13:26:39 Shameran Abed

In our country, we seem not to understand the difference between the responsibilities of a member of parliament and those of local government institutions. Parliamentarians, and candidates for parliamentary seats, themselves are often confused. Ask any candidate for the upcoming general elections what they will do if elected and they will tell you about the school they want to build, or the road they want to fix, or the old factory they want to regenerate — none of which falls within the remit of these to-be parliamentarians. Instead, they are supposed to make laws, or to scrap them, or to amend them.
Parliamentarians are lawmakers, not school-builders. However, partly because of their lack of understanding of their actual role, and partly because the electorate expect these things from their member of parliament rather than from their local governments, our parliamentarians have traditionally been glorified lobbyists for their constituents who can’t find time to attend parliament because they wait for hours outside ministers’ offices to lobby for a bridge or a health complex to be built in their constituency. That is also what their re-election often depends upon: how much of the government’s attention they were able to direct to their particular area.
Can we expect the parliament that will be elected tomorrow to be different in this regard from previous parliaments? Will members of parliament actually attend parliament, putting an end to the perennial quorum crisis, and legislate on their constituents’ behalf, rather than lobbying ministers for handouts. Will they explain to their constituents that building a local school is not their responsibility, but the responsibility of their local government representatives? From what we have seen of the campaigns, and from what we have read of the candidates’ pledges, there is no reason to hold out much hope.]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28889145 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28889145 2008-12-28 13:25:00 Tanim Ahmed

Be it the US-led invasion of Iraq or the military-controlled interim government in Bangladesh, a viable exit or escape route seems to be eluding the actors of both theatres. As the election day draws near, the interim government has visibly stepped up its effort to secure assurance that, whoever comes to power, all its actions will be endorsed in the first session of the ninth Jatiya Sangsad. The political parties, too, are as keen on securing votes as they are about their escape route.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia solemnly declared on December 24—a date that had taken on much significance in the run-up to elections—that her party was not backing out of the parliamentary polls. In making the public announcement, she allayed much of the apprehensions about the holding of the elections. However, that did not stop her from pointing fingers at the Awami League. She indicated her archrivals when she warned in the name of the people that rigged polls would not be acceptable. Hasina, on her part, has only reciprocated the allegations. She has accused her archrivals of being engaged in staging a drama at Comilla with the grenades. She has also accused her rival party of trying to sabotage the polls.
Such tone of the leaders of both parties only reminds one of the past elections, where there have been similar exchanges of accusations. One accusing the other of manipulation and foul play is a routine exercise ahead of almost every election. That also happens to be the planned escape route for the losing party. If the BNP loses, then it would have to be necessarily because of foul play by the Awami League and in no way due to the BNP’s failure, and vice versa. There is no such thing as accepting defeat in politics, not in Bangladesh.
So whatever the case, if this pre-election rhetoric is anything to go by, defeat would not be accepted gracefully by either camp. Nor is it likely that there would be congratulatory speeches from the losing camp and promises of full cooperation in the governance of the state for the elected government’s tenure. One only hopes that this lack of sense and prudence would not spill on to the streets or make the parliament as ineffective as in the past. ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28888135 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28888135 2008-12-26 04:15:05 Sonia Kristy

The political parties have come up with their manifestos all colourful and bright promising us the golden Bengal — shonar bangla. The education sector understandably features prominently in the party pledges. Attaining 100 per cent literacy, encouraging free education, giving lucrative stipends, setting up schools, colleges, university madrassahs — almost anything and everything the aspiring politicians could think of were included. One party pledged to put emphasis on vocational training while another went overboard and promised to set up an Asian Culinary College that will produce chefs, waiters and food and hygiene experts. For a manifesto that makes largely generic pledges in the areas of health and even mainstream education, one can only wonder the motives behind such specificity.
The parties promised to set up IT villages, e-parks, modernise madrassah education and further the country in the path of science, technology as well as theology. One particular thing all the political parties agreed to do is depoliticise the campus and free it from the clutches of ‘dirty’ student and teachers’ politics (now, we all know who are responsible for giving student politics a bad name). Pledging to promote healthy politics was in no one’s agenda. No one thought the students should be encouraged to study social sciences, even as a subsidiary subject that is so important for the students, the future generations of the nation, to grow up as conscious citizens and become the future faces of politics and policymaking.
One party has pledged to provide stipends and financial aid to students who will have been deemed to have done ‘courageous and heroic’ deeds — strange words to qualify any aspect of scholastic pursuit. This party has a students’ organisation infamous for slitting veins of those with dissenting views or don’t subscribe to their school of ‘politics’. One would then logically conclude, or at least seriously ponder, whether this incentive to ‘heroic and courageous’ students from this particular party, was actually meant for those who would ‘heroically’ attack — or shall I say engage in ‘vein slitting programmes’ of — students who dare to ‘pollute’ the campuses with such filthy and vile things as freedom of thought and expression. ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28886526 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28886526 2008-12-23 02:25:34 Shameran Abed

A couple of days ago, the chief election commissioner was seen telling a scrum of reporters that the election commissioners are ‘super-humans’ and have ‘supernatural powers’. He was trying to look serious while saying it as well. Of course, he was not actually serious and thankfully so. He was being sarcastic. It was a slightly scary sight as well.
To go back a little, it all started with the High Court ordering the Election Commission to reinstate the candidatures of several candidates who had been barred, for various reasons, by the commission from running in the upcoming parliamentary polls. Having heard their appeals and dismissed those as well, the commission had then set about printing ballot papers. In the meantime, these candidates appealed the commission’s decision once again, this time to the High Court. The courts, having heard their appeals, decided that they ought to be reinstated and ordered the commission to do just that. Now, the commissioners are evidently upset that the High Court is sending them candidates to reinstate everyday and causing havoc to their ballot paper printing process.
While the chief election commissioner’s apparent frustration is understandable, his sarcasm is mistimed and misplaced. First of all, if the High Court cannot find any reason for cancellation of a person’s candidature, it has no choice but to order his or her reinstatement. Second, these processes would not have to be completed in such a frenzy, within two weeks, if the EC had paid more attention to the electoral process than political engineering over the past 23 months. If anyone is at fault here, is it not the commission for wrongly cancelling the candidatures of those they are now having to reinstate?
Therefore, if the commissioner wants to show his frustration, he should show it to himself and his colleagues for their mess-up. He should not be doing it on live television, and nor should he insinuate that the High Court is somehow at fault for any of this. ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28886157 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28886157 2008-12-22 13:43:38 Rubayat Khan

Most political parties have released their election manifestos already, individually. If each of the parties were contesting elections on their own, it would have been easy to compare and contrast and eventually pick favourites. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these parties are riding in one of two, immense, wagons. So, with multiple manifestos within alliances, how will the AL-led or the BNP-led alliances choose their policies? Shouldn’t they have published joint manifestos to outline what their priorities will actually be if and when they go to power?
In our obscenely bi-partisan political system, the smaller parties blend into the two colossal melting pots led by AL and BNP without the slightest change in the composition of the brew. But there are two major undercurrents — namely Jamaat-e-Islami and, to a lesser extent, Jatiya Party (Ershad) — that wield significant influence over the colours of our two major parties.
So the questions effectively become – how will JP and Jamaat affect AL and BNP policies respectively? Unlike the little kid in that story, are we swallowing the proverbial pills along with the roshogollas? Will our disposition to support either the BNP or the AL come back to maul us?
There are no easy answers to these questions. There could be overwhelmingly negative outcomes, if the BNP-led alliance government chooses once again to turn a blind eye to Islamist militancy even when bombs are going off, or if they allow the persecution of minorities like the Ahmadiyas.
Or, perhaps, the Jamaat and the JP may have positive influences on their bigger alliance partners. Maybe JP will be able to lure AL into its commendable decentralization scheme outlined in its manifesto.
The third possibility is the null – with no impact of Jamaat, JP or even the manifestos themselves! Perhaps the BNP and the AL will ignore its numerous promises and keep doing what they do best – partisanise the administration and constitutional bodies, and institutionalise corruption.
But regardless of what those influences will be, we deserve to know. Before we stand in line to cast our ballots on election day, we need to be informed, as well as inform the people, on what exactly we are placing our bets on. ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28885542 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28885542 2008-12-21 02:10:51 Mahtab Haider

Suddenly, there’s a good deal of talk among Dhaka’s chattering classes about whether former military strongman Ershad really was that bad. ‘Were we really worse off under Ershad’s dictatorship compared to the democracy that the two women gave us?’ the chatterers are saying. With Ershad further legitimised by borrowed political capital from the AL, the number of Ershad-era apologists seem to be on the rise in the mainstream. The logic seems to be: if the decision to allow Ershad into the mohajote can’t be defended, the next available option is to defend Ershad.
This is akin to drinking from a poisoned chalice.
By covering up the sins of a military dictatorship to suit a short term political convenience, those who lived through the horrors of that dictatorship are telling an unconscionable lie to their successor generation.
It’s one thing to accept Ershad into a political alliance — and why not, if he comes through the democratic process — given that both political parties have godfathers and criminals aplenty. But it’s quite another to suggest that his record is clean or cleaner than that of democratically elected leaders.
Two-and-half years ago, as the two major political alliances had courted Ershad for the scrapped January 2007 elections, I had interviewed Selina Akhter and Marium Begum — mothers whose sons Dr Milon and Noor Hossain were both martyred in the movement to oust Ershad and restore democracy in 1990. ‘How can I accept that my son was martyred for a country that will allow his killer to become president?’ Selina Akhter had asked. Imagine her grief that those in society who lived through those times, witnessed the horrors, now want to sweep the memory of Noor Hossain or Dr Milon under the carpet to defend their party’s inscrutability. By all means, allow Ershad into your political fold, but please, please, don’t distort history to give an autocrat a clean slate. ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28885069 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28885069 2008-12-20 01:45:16 Tanim Ahmed

So all the parties have pledged to ensure food security. Emerging from an especially difficult year that saw low food grain production due to natural calamities, worsened by the global financial and food crises, no surprises there. To that end the parties have promised to ensure availability of cheap inputs on one end and fair prices of the produce at the other end. Now that the election campaign is in full swing, rallies and processions feature the party symbols. So the Awami League rallies and processions with the typical Bangladeshi country boat are all too common. Same story with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. But their symbol, the sheaf of paddy is more symbolic to food security and certainly more handy to wave around. Their choices of weapon are also fitting — the ‘oar’ versus the ‘sickle’. And as people will well remember, it was one too many skirmishes pitting the oar against the sickle that saw the military forces stage an intervention last year. Oars and sickles are still in the background and thankfully so.
But one cannot help but wonder with all those sheaves of paddy being waved about, how much paddy would it take to run a campaign for the BNP? If every supporter even wanted to have a strand of it, it would almost certainly threaten food security even before the elections have happened and a party might be blamed for having broken their pledge even before it made it to the elections! On the other hand there should be a lucrative niche market for plastic sheafs of paddy. Now there is an industry waiting to be plucked out of non-existence. One only hopes that the Jatiya Party and the Awami League does not take to carrying around their symbols—boats and ploughs—or the rural economy as we know would surely be on the verge of collapse. ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28884686 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28884686 2008-12-19 03:42:31 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28884486 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28884486 2008-12-18 20:00:24 Shameran Abed

So, it turns out that we have a ‘no’ vote option in these elections. Don’t like a candidate, you can go into the polling booth and vote for none of the above. How is that different from simply not turning up to vote at all you ask? It is different because it shows that you actually took the trouble to participate in the electoral process, and sets you apart from those who didn’t vote just because they were lazy or could not be bothered. Also, if more than 50 per cent of the votes cast in a constituency are ‘no’ votes, i.e. if the majority of voters reject all the candidates contesting for that seat, the Election Commission will apparently conduct a re-election in that constituency. That outcome, however, is highly unlikely. It is difficult to imagine a situation where the number of ‘no’ votes cast in a constituency will outnumber all the votes cast for all the different candidates put together. In any case, there is great novelty value to the whole ‘no’ vote thing.
But novelties aside, the ‘no’ vote option does have several practical implications. Some argue that to vote ‘no’ is to waste your vote because your vote can make a real difference to how the country is governed and to refuse to choose between the candidates on offer is a cop-out. Others feel that the ‘no’ option gives them, for the first time, an opportunity to officially register their protest against the nature of politics in our country. The one potential downside of the ‘no’ option, as far as I am concerned, is that it discourages voters who are not happy with the major party candidates to search out and learn about the other candidates – nominated by fringe parties or independent. There may be a tendency this time to just vote ‘no’ just because the candidates nominated by the major parties are unpalatable. That would be unfortunate, because unless we start electing better representatives to parliament, neither politics nor governance will see any qualitative change. Anyway, the option now exists. It’s up to voters to decide what they want to do with it! ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28884135 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28884135 2008-12-18 02:46:48 Mir Ashfaquzzaman

The Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, it seems, have stolen a few leafs out of the recent US presidential elections. At least that’s what the way they have named their manifestos for the December 29 elections to the ninth Jatiya Sangsad. The AL president, Sheikh Hasina, unveiled on December 11 her party’s manifesto, ‘Charter for Change’. Detailed in the charter is the party’s ‘Vision 2021’, which has been dedicated to the young generation. The next day, the BNP chairperson, Khaleda Zia, released her party’s manifesto, ‘Save the Country, Save the People’.

Wondering why the titles of the AL and BNP manifestos ring so familiar? Rewind to the campaigns that the Democrats and the Republicans ran for the US presidency earlier this year. While John McCain, the Republican nominee and senator from Arizona, put ‘Country First’ as his campaign theme, Barack Obama, his Democratic counterpart and fellow senator from Illinois, harped on the tested and trusted theme of ‘change’. ‘Change we can’, Obama assured and reassured the American people. He targeted the first-time voters, the ‘young generation’.

The mantra of change worked wonders for Obama, as he virtually had a cakewalk in the November 4 elections. Not only the young generation, a sizeable section of the not-so-young Americans also voted for him. McCain was in a losing battle right from the start. At pains to dissociate himself from the policies of President George W Bush, McCain had the odds heavily stacked against him. The financial meltdown tolled the death knell for the Republican hopeful. That and the rest is history.

The AL policymakers could be thinking that the ‘change’ mantra would work for Hasina in Bangladesh just as it did for Obama in the United States. As such, one might wonder why the BNP chose a theme that did not work for McCain. In any case, the analogy drawn between the US and Bangladesh election campaign could be far-fetched.

On the other hand, it is entirely likely that the Awami League and the BNP have not really given the manifestos, especially their titles, any serious thought; after all, manifestos do not win elections in Bangladesh, do they? ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28883953 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28883953 2008-12-17 20:26:53 Shameran Abed

Talk about using religion for political gain, nothing demonstrates it better than the way our two top political leaders kicked off their election campaigns – by visiting the shrines of Hazrat Shah Jalal and some other Muslim saints in Sylhet. Of course, political leaders can, if they wish, visit shrines of saints and holy men. There is nothing wrong with that. But to do so merely to appeal to the religious sentiments of the majority — which, let’s face it, is all that these visits are meant to do — is distasteful. It is their way of trying to play up their religiosity, or as Americans would say, to bolster their religious credentials. Even the Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist parties, whose politics itself is religion-based, do not start their campaigns in Sylhet; they obviously do not feel that their ‘religious’ credentials need any bolstering.

But with Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, first call is always Sylhet. Would it not have been nice though if one or the other of them, or both, had decided that this year would be different? Instead of trekking all the way to the north-east for a populist gimmick, would it not have been nice if the two leaders had decided that they would go to Savar to begin their campaigns by paying homage to the martyrs of our liberation war? Not that going to Savar would not have an element of populism in it, of course it would. Electoral politics is all about sounding the right populist tones. The difference though would be symbolic. But Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, I doubt, will ever go to Savar to begin their campaigns. Apparently, appealing to religious sentiments gets you further than appealing to nationalist sentiments. So there we are.]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28883938 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28883938 2008-12-17 20:12:08 Tanim Ahmed

Food for the hungry. Schools for the illiterate. Hospitals for the sick. Land for the landless. Guaranteed work for the unemployed. And that is not all. Between them the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party promised universal sanitation, food security, internet connection at every upazila. Agriculture will thrive with the government providing easy loans and subsidised inputs. Industries will flourish with massive investment. Exports will boom as new sectors emerge and unexplored markets are opened up. For the deprived, dispossessed and disadvantaged, there will be an all encompassing safety-net. There will be electricity lighting up houses in every nook and cranny, natural gas supply will reach the northern and western regions.

In short it is a long wish list for the most part. Considering the condition of the country, thanks to both the main parties bickering amongst themselves and exploiting their tenures in office, the list would have to be quite long anyway. One is a little more concrete than the other but no less wishful. There is just one problem though: neither of the wish lists mentions money. Each of the lofty wishes would require much of it to actually implement. One cannot help but wonder where the money will come from or how such amounts will be made available to all fronts at the same time. Subsidies for agricultural inputs, increased safety net, establishment of schools and hospitals, incentives for industries and power generation, besides a host of other programmes are all going to require substantial resources.

Unless, of course, there is a magic lamp somewhere and the genie will only do the bidding of the winning party. Zap, and there you have it. Now only if the people could get their three wishes. ]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28883936 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28883936 2008-12-17 20:08:18 Mahtab Haider

Voters aged between 18-25 years comprise nearly a third of the new electorate. Another third (47 million) of the country’s population are below the age of 15. So, any alliance that speaks a language that young adults understand could swing elections in their favour this time and for decades to come.

Realising this perhaps, the Awami League dedicate their ‘Vision-2021’ manifesto ‘to the young generation.’ The BNP too make a play for the gallery with a section on the jubasamaj in theirs. But a closer reading of the manifestos reveals how hopelessly out of sync they are with the issues affecting youth today. No surprise too since their venal power struggles keep young people out of politics, making them ageing parties in a nation of young people.

Despite the faltering education system, both parties seem to think that IT education in schools is the silver bullet – just as successive governments once believed that a submarine cable to the WWW would magically transform us into a software exporting nation. While the BNP promises easy terms for business loans for young entrepreneurs, a university degree — a privilege of the few — is a pre-requisite. The AL’s proposal of job guarantees is more mainstream but relies on charity rather than individual enterprise.

Lack of security and high crime rates, as well as the rising incidence of drug use, are some of the major issues affecting youth that get little attention in the manifestos. The economic, social and academic potential of young women, in particular, is greatly affected by insecurity. While both parties pledge to reduce crime, the crime-politics nexus looks likely to hold or get stronger in coming years.

Without representative political leadership within party ranks, young people seem to be among the most beleaguered vote banks in this year’s elections. To rectify this, the parties could have at least pledged to gradually allow a younger generation of leaders from the grassroots assume positions of power within the party structure. They haven’t. They want the votes, they don’t want to change.]]> http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28883933 http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/newage/28883933 2008-12-17 20:06:06