Legacy of failed leadership
The people of this country had the expectation that their political leaders would be able to rise above their personal prejudices and inhibitions to seek accommodation and compromise for the greater well-being of the nation. Alas, only a legacy of failed leadership is what stares us in the face, writes Iftikharul Karim
In about ten months time the BNP-Jaamat government should begin the process to wind down its constitutional tenure in office. After three successive freely elected governments in the last fifteen years - two BNP and one Awami League - one cannot but stop to reflect, as a concerned citizen, on the performance of our political leaders, especially since they will be seeking the vote of the electorate again.
During the short thirty-four years of our existence as an independent, sovereign nation, the Awami League (AL) has been at the center of our very chequered political history.
For the first time in 1970, under a different national flag, our people gave the Awami League a mandate for their Six Point Programme in the national elections. A seventy million strong provincial electorate provided them with the majority necessary for a national government. The top echelons, the inner circle of the AL leadership, failed to correctly assess the intentions of the military junta that had formed an unholy alliance with the AL’s political rivals, Bhutto’s Peoples Party. Instead of a transfer of power to the elected representatives, three months later our unarmed population was engaged in fighting a war of survival that eventually cost us at least a million lives. Unimaginable horrors and atrocities were committed on our people by the occupation military. Our political leadership had been either lulled into complacency by visions of power at the national level or allowed themselves to be duped and taken prisoners by a rapacious occupation army, as did Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Dr. Kamal Hossain. Or, as the rest of the entire AL high command did - scurried across the border to safe havens. The political leadership in whom we had put our trust for securing our legitimate rights left behind a trusting people to bear the brunt of the savagery of a professional army during the nine months of our war of liberation.
Our nationhood and our freedom were achieved by our valiant people and our men in uniform who would not tolerate the humiliation of a military occupation and were unwilling to be cowed by rape, torture and death. Notwithstanding the ineptitude of the AL leadership, a sympathetic and friendly neighbour, burdened by millions of our people who took refuge in its territory from a rapacious military, weighed in materially and morally with our struggle and together we freed ourselves from the clutches of a cruel occupation.
In 1973 the AL was again entrusted by us to establish a functioning democracy for which we had sacrificed so much and to rebuild a war-shattered nation traumatised by atrocities on an unprecedented scale by an occupation army. Within two years of the second mandate, by 1974, famine stalked the country, claiming the lives of many. Widespread corruption epitomised by a license-sale culture, theft and mismanagement of relief assistance that had poured in from a sympathetic international community came to be synonymous with AL leadership and the likes of Gazi Ghulam Mustafa, Chairman of the Red Cross Society. A miasma of fear blanketed the nation when an indifferent party leadership appeared unwilling to leash in youthful cadres. Finally, in 1975, democracy, which was our national aspiration and for which so much sacrifices had been made, was snuffed out by one-party politics and creation of BAKSAL.
Internecine rivalry and conspiracies within and among the top AL leadership resulted, in August 1975, in the assassination of the president of the country, a charismatic leader around whom the country had rallied during the war of liberation. A divided nation teetering on the brink of collapse struggled to overcome the turmoil that was the legacy of failed leadership.
The emergence of General Ziaur Rahman on the national political scene in Nov. 1975 through a dramatic and bloody rescue from incarceration in the cantonment marked the beginning of a period of unrest within the armed forces. According to those who claim to be in the know, there were as many as seventeen attempts by ambitious uniformed personnel to unseat him between 1975 and 1981.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Gen. Ziaur Rahman’s vehicle to national politics, was cobbled together from heterogeneous political entities who had been marginalised during the preceding years of Awami League dominance. President Zia, mindful of the pitfalls of corruption that had tainted the AL, kept these resurrected politicians on a tight leash while at the same time he set a personal example of integrity and honesty. It is generally accepted that only his stern hand kept the newly minted BNP from sliding into a mire of corruption during the remaining few months of his lifetime. When in May 1981 he too fell victim to assassins’ bullets, in a conspiracy involving the top echelons of the army leadership that has never been fully explained till this day, it is difficult not to point to a legacy of failed political leadership.
For the next ten years men in uniform led by General Ershad walked the corridors of power even though in the course of time, they too, like President Ziaur Rahman, doffed their uniforms for civilian attire. When after years of martial law Mr. Ershad’s political party was launched it was an extension of his personality and had only one agenda and that was to remain in power. If it meant the systematic subversion and degradation of every institution of governance – civil and military – then so be it. His cynical use of religion to further his political ambitions was the precursor to a phenomenon that had no place in the secular politics of Bangladesh until then. President Ershad will perhaps be most remembered by the people of this country for immorality, corruption and misuse of power that were the hallmarks of his office.
If civilian political leaders of the past had failed to live up to the expectations of the voting public, then the Jatiya Party and the civil-military bureaucracy of General Ershad had failed even more spectacularly. His removal from office by a popular mass uprising led by an alliance of the two mainstream political parties remains one of the few shining moments of Bangladesh’s political leaders.
BNP’s first full term of elected office that began in 1991 was the voting public’s reward to them for single handedly remaining in opposition to Ershad’s corrupt, immoral misrule when the leaders of the other mainstream political party, the Awami League, saw fit to be associated in his parliament as the official Opposition. A narrow margin of victory at the polls coupled with relative inexperience at governance compounded the insecurity of the ruling BNP in confronting the well-established AL in opposition, both within and outside Parliament. Their relative successes on the economic and development fronts during their term of office were negated by immaturity and obduracy of the leadership not to accept genuine criticism to their style of governance and change. BNP’s electoral debacle of elections of Feb. 1996 and ultimately conceding to constitutional amendment and Caretaker government was too little too late that was translated into their loss at the polls.
In 1996 a believing and trusting electorate gave the AL a mandate for the third time. Five years later in 2001, at the end of its tenure in power, we were left to wonder about our sovereign and independent identity, as AL leaders and even the PM insisted on referring to us not as ‘Bangladeshis’ (which is what the Constitution states) but as ‘Bangalees’, even though these were not mutually exclusive. One appellation defined a national identity while the other a linguistic and cultural entity.
As for a functioning democracy, an elected Parliament continued for years without the participation of almost half its members, because the majority party would not countenance the minority parties to voice their viewpoint, even in the ‘house of democracy’. There was qualitative change in the threshold of violence in our society with the first of the bomb attacks directed first at cultural activities and later at political and social leaders. Everyday our newspapers reported how ‘armed mastaans’ had carved out their territories like the ‘warlords’ of the past, raping, looting and murdering with impunity. An environment of fear and intimidation generated a sense of complete insecurity throughout the country so much so that even the leader of the party in power felt it necessary to enact a special law for continued protection even after leaving office as PM.
On the economic front, the ‘international basket case’ of 1974 had by 2001, earned the opprobrium of being the ‘most corrupt nation’. Without an iota of remorse, and almost as if wanting to confirm this unfortunate stigma of greed and plunder, an AL dominated Parliament very generously ‘donated’ public property to the PM so that she could continue to occupy the Prime Minister’s official residence even after finishing her term and being out of office. A surprisingly discerning voting public rendered its verdict in the 2001 election for what it perhaps perceived as a failure of leadership and threw them out of office.
Having won at the polls in 2001 with a majority that they did not anticipate, the BNP government and its leadership has for the last four years ostrich like refused to see the extent of the web of obscurantism that had been woven by illiterate or at best half educated mullahs in our society. As a consequence radical and extremist elements have been emboldened to push forward, through an orchestrated campaign of violence and mayhem, their distorted notions of society and social order. Whatever else BNP’s shortcomings during their current tenure, and there are many including well founded allegations of nepotism and widespread corruption reaching to ministerial levels, the singular failure on the part of the BNP leadership to address this hydra-headed menace will far outweigh the somewhat mixed bag of successes on the economic and other fronts and will surely come to haunt them at election time.
At the same time, whatever justification the AL may put forward, the voting public is not likely to forget how it reneged on its pledge to refrain from the use of hartals as expressions of political dissent. Nor are the voters likely to overlook the continued absence of the elected AL representatives from the parliament for almost all of these four years when they assess their politics in preparation for the polls.
The people of this country had the expectation that their political leaders would be able to rise above their personal prejudices and inhibitions to seek accommodation and compromise for the greater Well-being of the nation. Alas, only a legacy of failed leadership is what stares us in the face.
The writer is a former diplomat
Human rights that really matter
We have the knowledge and weapons to save lives through humanitarian and environmentally sound anti-malaria programs. Unfortunately, we have lacked the moral clarity and political willpower to do so, write Niger Innis and Paul Driessen
Human Rights Day (December 10) focuses on a myriad of ‘rights’ that activists and commissions declare are ‘fundamental.’ Some certainly are, while others are questionable, at best. This year, news stories will likely dwell on secret CIA jails that supposedly violate the rights of terrorist intent on maiming and murdering adults and children.
Conspicuously absent will be accounts of what growing numbers of people view as intolerable human rights violations that affect billions of innocent people every year.
Back in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, the United States and Europe used DDT and other insecticides to protect soldiers, war and concentration camp survivors, and entire nations from the ravages of typhus, malaria and yellow fever. If they had not, millions would have died.
Instead, these killer diseases were completely eradicated from the US, Europe, Canada and Australia. However, two billion people – a third of humanity – are still at risk of getting malaria in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Half a billion actually get it every year, leaving them unable to work or care for their families for weeks or months on end. More than a million die, and tens of thousands are left permanently brain-damaged. Half are children.
Incredibly, the annual death toll from malaria is over 10,000 times greater that the U.S. toll from the West Nile virus that so terrifies American mothers.
Different species of mosquitoes carry constantly mutating malaria parasites under widely varying conditions in tropical to temperate regions. But it’s still a preventable and treatable disease.
We have the knowledge and weapons to save lives through humanitarian and environmentally sound anti-malaria programs. Unfortunately, we have lacked the moral clarity and political willpower to do so. Certain environmental groups, governments and even healthcare agencies support bed nets and various other interventions that do help in controlling malaria. But many of them viscerally oppose the most effective weaponry in our arsenal: insecticides, especially DDT.
Just spraying tiny amounts of DDT on the inside walls of houses once or twice a year keeps 90 percent of mosquitoes from even entering, reduces malaria rates by 75 percent or more, and enables doctors to provide the very best medicines to people who still get malaria. South Africa used this approach to slash malaria rates by 96% in three years. That’s why we hold that access to life-saving insecticides is a fundamental human right.
Today, though, people in wealthy, malaria-free countries fear insecticides more than this horrific disease. They conjure up specters of speculative risks from DDT, but downplay the misery and death that the insecticide would prevent. They threaten aid cutoffs and agricultural export bans against any malaria-endemic country that even suggests it might use DDT.
These actions – by Greenpeace, the Pesticide Action Network, Physicians for Social Responsibility, World Health Organization, U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank and European Union – are major human rights violations. The stony silence of Amnesty International, the United Nations and similar organizations raises disturbing questions about their fitness to judge anyone’s alleged human rights violations, or their failure to meet ethical or ‘corporate social responsibility’ standards.
Fortunately, the tide is turning.
The Hedge Funds vs. Malaria Business Leadership Conference this week at Atlanta’s Emory University brought together distinguished business, academic, medical, sports and political leaders to outline new strategies for reducing malaria. Speakers discussed programs, technologies and private initiatives that could bring health, hope and prosperity to nations that malaria has kept mired in poverty and misery.
Nearly every speaker has endorsed the ‘Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW Declaration’ [KMMN]. It demands that US, EU and UN policies permit, encourage and support the use of DDT, other insecticides and modern drugs. Otherwise, millions will continue to die needlessly.
The Declaration promotes insecticide use in addition to – but never instead of – all the other weapons we use to combat this serial killer. It presents in detail the reasons why DDT, other insecticides and new combination drug therapies are vital to controlling malaria.
The KMMN campaign has already gained the support of Nobel Peace Laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr. Norman Borlaug, Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore, Congress of Racial Equality national chairman Roy Innis, and hundreds of clergy, physicians, infectious disease experts, political leaders and human rights advocates from all over the world. (See www.FightingMalaria.org to read and endorse the declaration.) It has already helped persuade Congress to enact legislation directing the USAID to revamp its policies – and the agency is responding, albeit slowly.
However, all this marks only the beginning.
Winning the war against trillions of malarial mosquitoes will require every bit of the innovative can-do spirit that stopped cholera and polio – the kind that could one day put malaria on the ash heap of history. It will require eliminating the obstacles and restrictions erected by radical activists and bureaucrats, whose devotion to environmental purity is often stronger than their devotion to human health and life.
Like Martin Luther King, we have a dream of a day when parents and children can live without fear of being struck down by malaria. Of a day when grandparents can talk of a time, long ago, when there was a disease called malaria.
Many of us have witnessed that change right here in the United States. There is no reason it cannot happen in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
It will require a willingness to accept the reality of the huge task before us, and take whatever steps are necessary to stop malaria’s global reign of terror. But it can be done.
And, there is no better time to begin than now, on international Human Rights Day.
Niger Innis is national spokesperson for the Congress of Racial Equality. Paul Driessen is CORE’s senior policy advisor
Egypt’s new dilemma
Violence and mass arrests of Brotherhood supporters accompanied the poll, and on Wednesday at least eight
people were killed amid widespread complaints that police had stopped some Opposition voters casting their ballots, writes Simon Tisdall
THE muslim Brotherhood’s success in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, which came to a turbulent end on Thursday, will reverberate around the Arab world. The region traditionally looks to Cairo for a lead. And potentially incompatible demands for strengthened civil societies and the integration of Islamists into mainstream politics are this year’s hot topic.
The Brotherhood’s advance also poses a dilemma for Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s President, and for the United States and other countries urging greater Middle East democracy but fearful of Islamist activism. Officially, the Brotherhood is banned in Egypt, as in several Arab countries.
The George W. Bush administration refuses to talk to the movement. It is equally wary of Islamists such as Hamas, expected to make gains in next month’s Palestinian elections.
Poll results gave the ruling National Democratic party and its allies roughly 333 seats in the 454-seat Assembly. Secular parties and independents took a handful of seats. But the Brotherhood was the big gainer. Its 19 per cent share of the vote, translating into a record 88 seats, confirmed it as Egypt’s main Opposition group — despite its decision to field only about 150 candidates for fear of provoking a crackdown.
Fraud claims repeated
The elections saw a repeat of the fraud claims that marred Mr. Mubarak’s re-election triumph in September. Violence and mass arrests of Brotherhood supporters accompanied the poll, and on Wednesday at least eight people were killed amid widespread complaints that police had stopped some Opposition voters casting their ballots.
‘Bullets govern the elections,’ the Opposition Al-Wafd newspaper declared. Meanwhile, the pro-government Al-Gomhuria warned that ‘The Mullahs are Coming!,’ playing on fears that although the Brotherhood’s campaign emphasised practical issues, its slogan ‘Islam is the Solution’ pointed to a hidden agenda of social intolerance, Sharia law, repression of women, and hostility to religious minorities.
The Brotherhood says that is a distortion. It spokesman, Mohammad Moursi, said earlier this year: ‘All around the world, people want to be democratic, to pick their own leaders. Creating a democratic, civil party is our aim. We want political reform. But the constitution says the main source of all laws is the Qur’an.’
Setback for reforms
Meanwhile, Egypt’s reform rollercoaster hit another trough this week with the renewed detention of former presidential candidate Ayman Nour. ‘Nour’s trial, like the violence against voters, is a terrible advertisement for President Mubarak’s supposed reform agenda,’ Human Rights Watch said.
Mr. Nour’s plight also prompted criticism from the U.S. ‘This is the latest in a string of events that cause us serious concern about developments in Egypt,’ the State Department said.
But while condemning poll irregularities, Washington says ‘considerable progress’ has been made.
Egyptian officials say that despite all the problems, the impetus for reform will gather pace.
‘The process has become unstoppable,’ one official said. ‘The next elections [in 2010] will bring even bigger changes.’
Asked whether the ban on the Brotherhood would be lifted, he said it was up to the movement to abide by Egypt’s Constitution, which forbids parties based on religion, ethnicity or gender.
It had to decide whether it was ready to join the secular political mainstream.
The Hindu
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