Professor Dr. Abdul Momen
Bangladesh is located in-between two great powers; India and China. The relationship between these two countries is at times not friendly. In 1962, India and China had a war and even today, from time to time, there have been border clashes between them.
Bangladesh maintains good relationship with both the countries and never gets involved in their bilateral issues. Bangladesh shares almost 4,200 kilometer long borders with India and it has a historical relationship with India. India assisted her to be an independent country in 1971. Without India’s support, the independence of Bangladesh could have been difficult and painstaking. On the contrary, China like the USA and USSR, did not want Pakistan’s breakup in 1971. But because of Z. A. Bhutto’s greed and ambition, India could liberate Bangladesh with stunning victory. In fact, more than 93,000 well-trained Pakistan army had to surrender to the Joint Forces of Bangladesh and India on 16th December, 1971. Can Pakistan ever forget it?
Secondly, the recent trends of enthusiastically embracing China and Pakistan, two solid friends and castigating and blaming India for all evils and also threatening to boycott India have to be evaluated carefully in the light of USA’s overall goal of containment of China. Instead of domestic reform, entangling in the regional and global power politics may lead us to more uncertainty.
Can Pakistan ever take their surrender lightly? Pakistani occupation army did excesses and Bangladeshis that are above 65 years of age can hardly forget the atrocities committed by Pakistan army in 1971. But those Bangladeshis that are young, and between their twenties and thirties neither went through the atrocities and ignominy nor have experienced economic deprivation as much as the people of 1970s when 78% of Bangladeshis were living below the poverty level unlike today’s 18%. Naturally, in this globalized world of WiFi, Internet, and Social media they are born with different ambition and approach to life. The old generation has witnessed the curse of poverty and hunger and they are more discipline, and more pragmatic. The new ones dream to capture the world with their innovation and determination.
Over the last 15 years, the deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina truly enhanced the ambition of young Bangladeshis with the spirit of ‘can do’ mentality. She often says, ‘we are a nation of victors, we won our independence, and if we have self-confidence, no one can stop us’. Thus she enhanced the confidence level of our young generation.
Recently, our young generation did a miracle. They toppled Sheikh Hasina’s government who ruled the country with iron-fists like that of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of England. Not only that, they forced her to leave the country. Following Sheikh Hasina’s downfall, Bangladesh went through a period of anarchy and lawlessness that it never experienced ever before. Good news is, the young students picked up a very mart and internationally well-respected Nobel Laureate to head their Interim government. It is reported that 198 celebrities and world leaders including 92 Nobel Laureates expressed their joys, and welcome him through a newspaper advertisement in USA. Bangladeshis are excited at it as such never happened before. No wonder, they are convinced that he can deliver what our young generation hopes to achieve.
Our young generation, the leaders of “non-discrimination” and non-deprivation in every walks of Bangladesh life have got a unique liberator, a mosaic person in Professor Muhammad Yunus who himself underwent harassments and discrimination. Prophet Moses liberated the Jews from the shackles of the mighty Pharos of Egypt with miracles. Now should we look forward to Dr. Yunus for the end of all discrimination and deprivation, and a bright future for Bangladesh? When the Noble Committee honored our Professor Yunus with a Nobel Prize in 2006, the whole country was thrilled and the world was hoping that poverty will be a thing of the past. He himself assures that it will be available only in museums. Unfortunately, more than 800 million people are still suffering from poverty and hunger.
Discrimination and deprivation is everywhere in Bangladesh for years. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina realized it during her long 40 plus years of public service. In order to reduce it, she proposes to empower people. She argued that if people can be empowered by eliminating poverty and hunger, by imparting education and ensuring gainful employment, by including the excluded people in the development trajectory, ending deprivation and terrorism, then they can face any emerging challenges. Her proposal of ‘People’s Empowerment: A Peace-centric Development Model’ was adopted in the UN in 2012 with consensus. Irony is that, although the world adopted her philosophy, she failed to end discrimination and deprivation in her own land.
Although her ‘trump card’ was rapid economic development, yet it created wide income inequality and frustration. She depended too much on her extremely powerful and all pervasive bureaucrats and she ignored the recommendations of her political associates. Corruption and money laundering became rampant yet she failed to take stronger actions. Although her party people advised her to initiate strong accountability and mandatory submission of wealth reports by her officials, she was shy in enforcing it. Although nation’s banking sector was in a mess yet she failed to take corrective actions. Although many of her party members believed that the statistics that she receives do not reflect the reality, and therefore, they suggested her to review the issue and take stronger actions to reduce inflation, she ignored them. They argued that a mismatch of supply and demand besides chadabaji and faulty statistics are the causes of sustained inflation. Fact of the matter is, since she was in power for a very long time, she became all-knowing and non-compromising. The sycophants around her, mostly civil and military bureaucrats hardly allow anyone to meet and talk to her in confidence. They always prevented them in the name of security.
At times, she invites her political party supporters and MPs at her public meetings and ceremonies, but her supporters hardly get any audience with her. She delivers her sermons and supporters applaud it but never can chance talk to her as there is always a big physical distance between her and her supporters in the name of security.
When students were demanding to rationalize the quota system, although her party has no objection to it, and in fact, they also wanted it, but she listened to a few that argued for a court decision. Quota system is a political decision and there was no reason to involve court in it. In the US, the courts and judges defended slavery for over 400 years but once President Abraham Lincoln took a political decision to abolish it, they stopped defending slavery.
Sheikh Hasina has gone but her party supporters are in real danger. They are living in nightmares. Their shops, farms, offices, or homes have been vandalized, looted or burned down. No one never ever has seen so much of vandalism and looting in Bangladesh before. As more than 450 police stations were vandalized, 44 police officials were beaten to death, and over 300 police vehicles have been destroyed, police are demoralized and shaky to stop mobs and vandalism. Neither the firefighters dare to put down fire. The nation experienced total lawlessness and anarchy for last few days. As per reports, government’s security forces plus unknown private shooters killed around 329 persons prior to her downfall (as per Home Adviser Brig..Gen. Sakawath, out of these deaths, many were killed by private shooters by using 7.62 bullets that Bangladesh forces never use), but as per unverified Social media reports, over 8,958 were killed after her departure from 5 August to 30th August. This matter should be investigated. UN reports that around 650 were killed from 16 July to 11th August. Irony is that although most of the Advisers of Dr. Yunus interim government are Human Rights activists who are locally called as “Manobother Ferrywalla”, yet maximum Human Rights violations are occurring under their watch.
These anarchy and lawlessness prove one thing — hatred and vengeance is still widespread In Bangladesh. Till today the minority community needs special protection. This is a shame on Bangladesh as Bangladesh over the last 25 years have been preaching to the rest of the world a concept popularly known as the Culture of Peace that demands to inculcate a mindset of respect and a mindset of tolerance towards others irrespective of ethnicity, color, opinion, race and religion. Such mindset is absent in Bangladesh till to-date. Instead of following legal process, they find pleasure in inflicting harms to others. Nearly 200 Headmasters, 48 Vice Chancellors, 1300 teachers, and hundreds of educationists, doctors, and professionals were forced to resign. These are not signs of hope.
Good news is, Professor Yunus has started taking actions that we demanded Sheikh Hasina to take, such as, annual wealth report submission, strong action on money laundering and banking sector, reform of the judicial system, reducing public harassment at the airports and passport offices, reform in the security forces, etc. although he mentioned that he has 3 specific priority goals and these are (1) restoration of law and order, (2) jihad against corruption, and (3) arrange a free and fair election.
Our judiciary has been a pain. Thousands of unnecessary cases are pending in the courts allowing income stream in perpetuity for lawyers, judges, peskers and their associates ignoring the pains and social malaises. Passport and NID are a right for all citizens. Unfortunately, harassment and demonization of applicants and customers are unacceptable in the passport offices and at the airports. Our Immigration and Custom Officials, the way they treat our law-abiding citizens, is like criminals. But we are afraid that adopting a hostile approach towards the Awami League (AL) party supporters, lodging over hundreds of court cases against the past regime involving over 250,000 people (both by name and without names), many of which are fabricated and false, even cases have been filed against dead AL leaders that died few years ago by abusing the police and legal system as was practiced before, will undermine this government and in the process, it may fail to achieve students’ goal of achieving a non-discriminatory and a fair judicial and administrative system. The Interim government is violating Human Rights and arresting people without warrants. Such abuse of the legal system and police operations must be stopped immediately. If such arbitrary practice continues, such will surely defeat the goals of our young students. Professor Yunus cannot be blind to such abuses.
Our young generation aims to have better life. Given our socio-economic and geographic condition, and myriad problems and challenges, we have to be smart in managing the issues. Small mistakes will add up and they may hurt the Interim government. We may remember that Fakruddin-Moinuddin military-backed government of 2007-08 undertook many credible reforms but their ‘minus-two’ formula did not work-out well resulting in a failure.
Our bureaucratic and administrative system itself is anti-people. Although they take all decisions and they allocate all resources, they never face any accountability. Our elected representatives, whether Councilors or MPs have no administrative and fiduciary responsibility, yet if there is any misuse of resources, they are the ones that face accountability. Although their only job is do ‘tadbir’ or request an official of the government, mainly a DC or a Secretary to take up a specific project that he/she or his/her constituency think is necessary and urgent. In fact, an elected representative cannot be corrupt without assistance and collaboration of relevant government officials. It may be equally true for a businessman. A businessman has to have strong collaboration to defraud people, to get undue advantages or to get illegal loans from a bank. Without connivance of the bankers or loan approvers, the businessman cannot have it. Therefore, to reduce discrimination and deprivation and public harassment, it is necessary to develop strong accountability system in each office. Otherwise, the fruits of non-discrimination movement may end up in vain.
The Interim government should concentrate in the reduction of corruption, mismanagement, reform in judiciary and security forces. My personal reading is, most of the MPs have no idea of ‘Aynagor”. First, Ayangor must be abolished and second, those who were responsible for such an institution should be identified and punished.
Most important, reform cannot be done in a vacuum and it must not be done by a non-elected government. The Interim government may undertake and specify the areas where reform is needed. In order to specify the areas, it may set up independent commissions. Once this is done, they should leave it to the elected representatives. Already a few political parties namely Nagorik Oikko, Gono Odiker, Biplovi Workers Party, ABP, and others including BNP have raised the fear of 1/11 of 2007-8 when non-elected individuals tried to depoliticized in the name of reform. Reforms introduced by executive orders may not be sustainable. Therefore, while the Interim government may identify the areas of reform, their prime goal should be creating an environment and immediately set up an independent and credible Election Commission to hold a free, fair, transparent, participatory and credible election.
198 global leaders including the UN Secretary General welcome the Interim government of Professor Yunus, and they also draw his attention for a transition to democratic governance. Handing powers to a democratically elected government should be the prime goal of the present Interim government. If they delay this, we shall lose an opportunity to reform as we did in the past. Remember, an opportunity loss is a loss to the nation.
Professor Dr. Abdul Momen, Former Foreign Minister of Bangladesh