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The future of Europe now appears to be stuck in the past. And by the past we mean the recent referendums which have decisively dealt a death blow to the EU constitution, so painstakingly crafted into shape by the likes of Valery Giscard d’ Estaing. If the French rejection of the constitution was a deep shock and a body blow, the move by the Dutch to say ‘no’ by more than 60 per cent of the vote is a clear state of the EU constitution falling into a state of the comatose. It is now unlikely that Europe will be able to regain the confidence it has been demonstrating over the years, at various councils, about its role in a future geo-strategic world. If there were earlier any thoughts that an integrated Europe would be a counter-weight to the power and majesty of the United States, that hope now seems to have become buried under the debris of the French and Dutch rejection. It will now be for Europe’s politicians to devise the ways in which they can best salvage at least some of the good things they thought they had put into the constitution.
   But that task promises to be a tough one, given the sure-footed way in which France and the Netherlands turned their backs on the EU constitution. There are already the convulsions that have been felt in Paris, where a deeply humbled President Jacques Chirac has been forced into changing the government. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has been duly sacrificed and in his place has come the articulate Dominique de Villepin. Perhaps one of the more important steps in the new French cabinet line-up has been the return of the young Nicholas Sarkozy as interior minister, a position he has held before. His return gives Sarkozy the opportunity to move with even greater force into a campaign for the presidency, an idea that has always been anathema to Mr. Chirac. The president clearly believes, like Charles de Gaulle but with little of de Gaulle’s charisma, in a sense of destiny. He would like to be president for a fresh term, but the EU vote has come as a big blow to him. But even if Chirac were to forego a new term, there are yet a lot of things that might happen to prevent Mr. Sarkozy from succeeding him. One cannot but remember that General De Gaulle was succeeded by his prime minister, Georges Pompidou. It may well be that the urbane de Villepin, who gave the Americans and the British some really tough time at the UN prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, could end up being the next president of France.
   The question of Europe has in a big way sent waves of fear down a number of capitals in the continent. One can expect quite a few changes in the Netherlands in the coming days. In Britain, the government of Tony Blair has to all intents and purposes been terrorised by the way things have happened to Mr. Chirac and Mr. Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister. He will now have good reason to rethink the whole Europe issue, given especially the moral strength the French and Dutch moves have created in Britain’s anti-Europe lobby. In the coming days, expect a good deal more to come out of Europe. As for the constitution, it is on a life support system, with little guarantee that it can get back to life.

The JP’s Bidisha issue

The expulsion of Bidisha Ershad from all positions she has been holding in the Jatiya Party of her husband reflects the tottering state of the party itself. A heavy element of uncertainty has clearly come to surround the party, once a strong prop to General Ershad in the days when he ruled Bangladesh in what large sections of people call an autocratic manner. In the last fifteen years, though, much has happened to Mr. Ershad and his party, to say nothing of their fortunes, to lead people into thinking that they all belong to the past. The JP which the crusty old general represents is today a faction of what it once used to be. There is another faction led by his former minister Anwar Hossain Manju. One other is the minuscule faction personified by Najiur Rahman Manjur. Within his faction, Mr. Ershad has been doing things that have clearly left his followers mystified. His marriage to the young Bidisha soon led to a situation where she began to dominate the councils of the party. In Parliament, it is first wife Roushan who has seemed to be in charge. On such media as television, Ershad and Bidisha often made it appear that they were a team not only in love with each other but also attached to the idea of a JP resurgence.
   And now the former military ruler, with a good number of cases hanging over him, has seen fit to push his new wife out of the party. There are the rumours that abound, those relating to Bidisha’s visits to India and the governmental threat of a revival of the cases should Ershad join an anti-government movement. The former president has already served six years in jail and could not contest the 2001 elections because of a criminal conviction. It is with tied hands that he has been doing politics, or has been trying to do so. The fact that Kazi Firoz Rashid has gone back to Ershad after some years with Manjur has not helped. Sardar Amjad Hossain, an old Awami Leaguer who ditched the party in the 1980s to link up with the Ershad regime, eventually rising to a ministerial position, has just been welcomed back to the AL by Sheikh Hasina. None of this is a sign of Ershad’s JP being in the best of health. Besides, there remains the lesson that once a military leader loses power, his party, formed under his uniformed patronage, simply fades away.

It is always Chintagrosto’s great misfortune to be coming upon bad language, or its byabohar. A few nights ago, a television natok on one of the TV channels showed an America-ferot young mohila telling the mesmerised jubok before her that she was an American ‘by born’. By born? Whatever has happened to the grammatically shotheek ‘by birth’, something that we were taught in school? But, more to the point, you become a little bicholito knowing that this was a natok on television and before showing it no one had the good sense to tell the wise lekhok that his use of the ingreji bhasha was wrong. This is just one of the many ways in which our use of language, both Bangla and English, has been getting from bad to worse.
   What is the mark of a shikkhito jaati? It is in the way we use words and phrases and pronounce them that is important. But when you see how obohelito language has been getting around us, you cannot but be amazed. The prakton and the bortoman rashtropoti both have a big problem with uchcharon. Why should that be the case? There are all the jaadrel montris around us who cannot say jibon but have it come out as zibon. That is an omarjonio oporadh because if you cannot pronounce your own bhasha, what has been the use of your shikkha dikkha? Again, when you see some of our montris on television, you realise that after all these years they have not learned to take the ancholik taan out of their uchcharon. There are rajnitibids who cannot pronounce prottek but can only manage to bring it out as pottek. And have you met some people who think there is such a shobdo as daaridrota? They have never even thought of the fact that there might be such a word as daaridro.
   When you think that all our Bangali jatiyotabad has been based on our maatribhasha, you can only weep in frustration when you see how your own Bangali bhais have been mutilating the language. Shorkari shocheebs, aeenjibis, MPs, teachers, virtually everyone is doing unspeakable things to the Bangla bhasha. The more shameful thing for the jaati is that these oggo bektis do not know what blunders they are committing. Like so many baagher bachchas, they go on instructing people on what to do and what not to do about their jibon-japon. If you count on your fingers the number of people who have actually used shuddho Bangla bhasha in public life in the recent past, you will find that the number is woefully few. In recent memory, it has only been General Ershad who has never misused or mispronounced a word. And the others? Let us say not a word about them. There has been a rashtropoti here who once spoke of taking us down the aloor poth. Some people thought he was really talking about potatoes, until they were informed that the president only meant alor poth, the path to light. There are influential bekti-borgos who will talk of their nyatas, not netas. They will say abong rather than ebong. The list goes on. You will eventually find that you cannot take so much pain after all. There is a limit to a man’s dhoirjo.
   
   Bishwabidyaloy hana-hani
   We may be in the process of becoming a borbor oshobbho jaati. Judging by the way conditions have been developing in the Dhaka bishwabidyaloy elaka, you can safely tell yourself that this is no more a land for bhadraloks to inhabit. The chhatros and chhatris, angry that a shohopathi has died under the wheels of a minibus, suddenly think that stoning and damaging other vehicles on the mohashorhok will be a form of justice meted out in the memory of the dead. Then the police come in, secure in the knowledge that their lathis and bonduks are enough to put these young people in their places. So what happens then is a lot of hoi choi, much mara-mari kata-kati. Our poolish bhais, unable to detect criminals anywhere, then march into the charukola institute and indulge in bedhorhok lathipeta on students and shikkhoks alike there. They really enjoy it, this breaking of bones and cracking of skulls, and there is no one, not even Allah Rabbul Alameen, who can stop them.
   And our VC mohodoy? We all heard him the other evening say that he will do his kortobyo and will not resign. If only his bibek tells him to go, he will go. The shomoshsha here is that he has not been doing his kortobyo at all. If he were, the police would not have entered his campus and humiliated everyone. As for his bibek, it should have worked the very moment the police went into the charukola building. No, the VC did nothing. He was happy to be escorted out of the place by the goonda bahini belonging to the shorkari chhatra dol. He did not even have the noitikota to tell those goons that they had no right to beat up the shadharon students for no rhyme or reason. So when some people say he has been working as vice chancellor for the JCD-wallahs, you cannot quite disagree with the notion. These jatiyotabadis are a ferocious lot. They suddenly begin running after their opponents with lathis and rods and yet claim that it was the other side which initiated the gondogol. If that was the truth, how did those lathis and rods materialise so suddenly? Never mind the answer, for there are many things for which you cannot really have a byakhkha. But do not forget that what has been happening in the university elaka is something which shames all of us. It is surprising that neither the prodhan montri nor any other montri has condemned the orajokota resorted to by their young followers. By the way, have you noticed that even as the BNP-wallahs were talking endlessly about the gonotantrik mon-manoshikota of their late shamorik protishthata, whose mrityu barshiki fell the other day, their juboks were creating obhutopurbo noirajjo in the country?
   
   Jolpona kolpona
   This has always been a desh for moha jolpona kolpona. When the cabinet shocheeb is about to retire, the potrikas waste a lot of space speculating on who his successor will be. When the prodhan nirbachon commissioner nears the end of his meyad, the jolpona kolpona is about who will take his place. These days, the talk is about the man who will be the next shena bahini prodhan. The rule is that whenever one man departs from the scene, there will be another to take his place. In other countries, that is the rule. It should be the same in ours as well.
   But there you have a problem. We live in such onishchito conditions that we have to be on the look-out for those who will one day preside over our fortunes. These days, we are all thinking of who will replace Mir Nasiruddin at the beshamorik biman cholachol doptor, assuming of course that he does go or is removed. We are also quite taken up with the question of the next tottabodhayok shorkar prodhan because the birodhis have already served notice that they will not accept the man the shorkar would like to have. In other words, we are all proceeding in a druto way to a shonkot, much like the one we faced in 1996, when the ponero February elections led to fresh ones in June of the same year.
   As you can guess, there is in this country much reason for jolpona kolpona. You may be surprised at that, but given the boishishto of our local rajniti, speculation is all we can indulge in.

There are not many cricketers and not many politicians in Bangladesh, past or present, who could make us immensely proud for attaining world class status in recognition of their sheer merit, and absolutely nothing else. On the other hand, many of them have done things in their own spheres that came close to being called ‘terrible’ and gotten away with it with total impunity. In the process many have caused people in many international fora to smile at their very sight. Those are the times when one does not feel comfortable to be seen in their company. We may love our cricketers too much and we may not love our politicians that much, but we have remained silent on occasions when they should have been given the stick. Now, to talk a little about the commonalities. Indeed, there are a great many things in common among the cricketers and politicians of this country and it remains an unsettled issue as to who emulates who. Finding the commonalities does not require the service of a Sherlock Holmes, rather these disturbing ‘idiosyncrasies’ manifest quite conspicuously before us everyday. For example, both of them remain charged up and emotionally heightened at the sight of the opposing sides thereby losing mental bearings in the process. Both our cricketers and politicians are prone to playing wild shots when it is absolutely not necessary. The cricketers show no foot work at the crease while the politicians do not have many a good work to their credit to stay in the political crease for long. Many of them crouch low in fear whenever a mild bouncer is thrown at them by the bowler from the other end. They have not learned to tackle it with patience and through application of better judgement. Then there are politicians who try to deliver difficult balls at the opponent like a yorker or a googly, but as they do not have any previous experience or practice of delivering such balls their legs trip on their own shoe strings and they fall flat pathetically on their face. The general secretary of a major political party in the opposition tried to deliver a googly some months back promising the followers that it would topple the incumbent government still batting at the crease, but before he could deliver anything he himself tripped and made a scene of sorts. And then there is the illustrious incumbent minister who is still very much ‘afloat’ and is sending bouncers, yorkers and ‘doosra’ (of Harbhajan fame), but nothing can dislodge those stubborn and audacious men batting at the crease. Rather, his opponents are scoring runs every time the minister bowls.
   In both cricket and politics in Bangladesh, selectors give more preference to youngsters having connection at the top than experience, talent and dedication. The ‘political connection’ has been the talk of the town in England after the bizarre batting by Bangladesh side. At home talks are going around about the fiery bands of new generation politicians who want to strike at every ball that comes thundering down the wicket. They do not care to go in the line of the balls, or do any fancy foot work, to gain advantage over the balls and score impressive runs. They are already living dangerously at the crease and it is only a matter of time when they will lose their wickets.
   So, the Bangladeshi brand of cricket and politics goes on in tandem in the country and outside as well even if it brings little benefit for us, the commoners, who are destined to watch the fiasco from the galleries. We are not sure when our politicians will learn to play their game like a Bradman or maybe a Tendulkar or when cricketers will learn to apply Gandhian tact in tackling the mighty English next time around.
   The writer is a senior journalist