ACC editorial
I was quite happy and satisfied to read your timely and very appropriate editorial a few days ago on the Anti-Corruption Commission’s letter to the secretaries of various ministries on ‘missing cars’.
All that has been said is very clear.
Now the matter should be followed up by the whole media so that action can be pushed into place.
This will certainly help the ACC and make a precedent for other organisations to follow.
In fact, we all should now rally behind the ACC to support and protect it from government and powerful coterie intervention.
Please keep up the good work.
M M Haque
Jeddah, KSA
Mahathir visit and Dhaka-KL ties
Mahathir Mohamad is a unique name in the Muslim world. In the current day world there is hardly an alternative person who can boldly talk and awaken the Muslims about their rights and interests in international forums like Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. A voice of the Muslim Ummah and former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad visited Bangladesh from 17-19 December 2004 and was accompanied by a 72-member high-powered business delegation. Dr. Mahathir’s Malaysia has earned enormous economic and social progress under his able leadership. Twenty years back Malaysia was not better developed than Bangladesh. It is the leadership quality that helped such massive developments in Malaysia.
The purpose of his visit to Bangladesh was two-fold. Primarily it was to accept an honorary degree of law from the University of Dhaka, and secondarily it was to strengthen the business relationship between the two countries. The ultimate outcome of his visit will take time to be evaluated. Bangladesh is a country of limited land with a vast population. Naturally, the land is almost unable to afford constant supplies of basic needs, including food, clothes, housing, treatment, education, economy, and employment for 140 million citizens in a 56000-sq km area. Reasonably, the advice of economic architects like Dr Mahathir Mohamad are helpful for us. We are lucky that Dr. Mahathir agreed to pay a visit to Bangladesh on one hand, but on the other hand, we are unlucky in the sense that we are unable to learn from his message.
Mahathir is an institution and the gap between his leadership and that of ours is no less big than between a professor and his students. When the professor gives a task the students are busy fighting and find no time to look for pen and paper. It is our problem and we inherited it from our forefathers. We are experts in fighting, vandalising, and disagreeing; and it has no end. We never learn, and we never let our people know the impact of political instability on economy. In his speech, Dr. Mahathir laid stress on education, political stability, and social harmony as prerequisites toward building a strong economy. He knows that without a strong economy a nation can never earn respect and durability in the current world of globalisation.
Political stability is our number one need at this moment for attaining economic development. To understand this issue, education is of paramount importance. Education, political stability, and development are tagged in one chain. Development is impossible if education and stability are ignored. Our leaders gain popularity by letting corruption loose in all sectors. A corrupt administration can never establish good governance. It rather kills all our dynamism. Terrorists kill people and corrupt management kills our dignity, awareness, development, and our future.
Dr Mahathir Mohamad is very much correct in saying that our people can be our asset instead of a burden provided we can educate them. I hope our leaders who were behind arranging the visit understood the language of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.
Mahbubul Hoque
Dhaka
Mahathir and Bangladesh
Mahathir’s recent visit to Bangladesh has attracted wide attention. All leading dailies wrote editorials on his visit. The editorials underscored the lessons that Bangladesh could learn from the Malaysian experience, particularly from Mahathir’s political and economic leadership in transforming Malaysia from an under-developed country to near the footsteps of a developed one.
Unfortunately, the editorials have mostly failed to give the readers the proper perspective about Mahathir and his qualities of leadership. It is true he has succeeded with Malaysia for when he took leadership, his country was just not under-developed economically; politically it was on the verge of disintegration. He had a clear vision on what to do and he never wavered from his basic objectives. He saw clearly Malaysia was not ready for democracy but had all the potentials for economic development but only if he tackled the political problem first and firmly. He ruthlessly suppressed the Chinese and the Indian minority by wresting from them political power and giving political supremacy to the majority Malays through the concept of Bumiputra. But he did not deprive the minorities from economic power and in fact compensated them by letting the Chinese covertly take leadership for the economic miracle that Mahathir contemplated for his country.
In contemplating that economic miracle, Mahathir correctly concluded that aid was not the tool for he distrusted the West and its interests in the developing world. Instead, he focused next door at Japan where he not only saw technology lying to be tapped but also an incredible amount of capital looking for investment destination. Mahathir opened Malaysia to Japanese investment amending investment laws to suit the Japanese. That was Mahathir’s vision, which in fact a realistic assessment of things around him and acting correctly. Of course, Malaysian miracle is just not Japanese investment or allowing the minority Chinese access to economic leadership. There were many other factors but Japanese investment and denying the Chinese political freedom but a freehand in the economy were the basic pillars of the Malaysian miracle.
Malaysia is, politically, not a parallel for Bangladesh. To think of a political leader in Bangladesh doing what Mahathir did in Malaysia would be madness. More importantly, our political problem compared to Malaysia’s when Mahathir took power, is hardly a problem at all and is more to do with personal interests of a few people in the two major political parties at the leadership level.
Shahjahan Ahmed
Dhanmandi, Dhaka
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