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The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Inquiry Committee, a non-official and an essentially in-house probe body comprising lawyers of representative as well as professional standing, have come out with a report or finding that says very little about the August 21, 04, grenade blast on an Awami League rally in Dhaka. The sneak killer attack has taken the life of Ms. Ivy Rahman, the front-ranking woman Awami League (AL) leader, among 20 others. It had been a close shave for Sheikh Hasina, the AL president.
   While nothing is yet heard of the case from the government, an SCBA, formed on August 22, 05, submitted its report at a press conference on February 27. By the committee’s own admission at the press conference of February 27, the report is ‘inconclusive,’ and does not quite identify the make of the grenade used in the killer attack. There is, however, the implicit inference that the unexploded grenades recovered from the spot after the attacks and detonated forthwith ‘destroying the forensic evidences,’ could be of ARGES model—the kind that is claimed to have been used in other grenade attacks.
   In the absence of any concrete evidences or stipulations, the committee based its report on interviews with the local people, said to be the eye-witnesses at the place of occurrence, and on some spot visits in the days following the deadly attack. The committee also lays the blame for its failure to come out with something substantive in its report on the feet of the government, which, according to the leading committee members, denied them access to police reports, forensic evidences, if any, and other relevant documents. That sounds credible given the government’s non-transparency, if not the inexplicable silence on such matters of grave security and political concern.
   But that does not absolve the committee of the frivolity of producing a rather lame report despite the sound and fury of stealing a thunder—that of publicity, that is.
   It is clear from the committee’s report that the investigations conducted by it were all play and no work. Neither the terms of reference, the modalities of the probe proceedings are a matter of public knowledge, nor did it hold any hearing, either in public or in camera, to give the probe a semblance of a serious probe undertaking. The leading lights of the committee did not provide even a platform for the purpose of the so-called investigations, and have been mostly itinerants without the country. The imprints of the legwork for collecting and collating the evidences or the depositions are starkly absent, and the analyses too in their opaqueness fail to bring the committee members’ legal geniuses into play.
   Although the full text of the report, published in a language daily, is structured suitably to qualify for an investigative exercise with the chapters, sections and annexure in place, it came out with what is nothing but already public knowledge or hypotheses. Even the reference to Jane’s Intelligence Weekly report on the Chittagong arms haul is cursory, though, in our opinion, it is perhaps the most important national security concern of all times till date, even though it may or may not have any relevance to August 21 grenade attack.
   This newspaper holds the government responsible for its failure to-date in unearthing the grenade attacks of May 21 at the shrine of Hazrat Shah Jalal injuring British High Commissioner Anwar Chowdhury besides other death casualties, the August 21 grenade attack on the Awami League on the Awami League rally that the report says ‘targeted Sheikh Hasina, leader of opposition and president, Awami league,’ and the killing of SAMS Kibria in a bomb blast at a public meeting in Habiganj. This newspaper also demands that all papers relating to the Chittagong arms haul, other police reports on bomb and grenade attacks since 1999, and the one-man Judicial Commission Report be made public forthwith.
   The apology of the SCBA Inquiry Committee report does not shed any light beyond what is known or stays unknown. The lawyers involved with the process should rather not play to the gallery and make a comic of an Inquiry, so-called.

Of Azad, a year on

In the year that has gone by since Professor Humayun Azad was made the target of a deadly attack near the Bangla Academy-TSC premises, nothing has happened to convince us that justice has been or will be done. In all this time, much water has flowed under the bridge. There have been murders aplenty, both of common citizens and illustrious personalities of the country. Politicians like Ivy Rahman and Shah AMS Kibria have been felled by assassins who, regrettably, have remained unapprehended. Those who targeted the British high commissioner in Sylhet in May of last year have quite predictably not been caught.  
   Perhaps one of the saddest images to come out of all this mayhem and death of the past year is the fact that Humayun Azad himself has been dead for the past six months. It was not an assassin who finally did him in, though they kept trying. It was a heart attack that took his life. On a morbidly philosophical plane, one can put it across that the cumulative pain and trauma that Azad had earlier gone through brought his life to such a swift and unexpected end in Munich. We have all been left much poorer by his passing. Our sense of poverty only goes up by quite a few leaps and bounds when we realise that no efforts have really gone into nabbing the people who wounded him so grievously in February last year. This failure to bring criminals to book, to ensure justice and the rule of law sends out a very bad message to the country. It is simply that criminality can get away with its nefarious deeds. 
   And yet a decent social order, the concept of good governance, all of these essentially refer to the need for a system where crime will be punished by those whose job is to uphold the security of people’s lives and the political stability of the state. We will, therefore, keep hoping that those who went all the way in their attempts to murder Professor Humayun Azad will sooner rather than later be hauled in by the law. That act will revive, just a little, our confidence in the ability of the state to come to our aid when we require its help.

The people of Nepal remain in a soup. Their king refuses to give up the authority he usurped weeks ago. At the same time, the Maoist guerrillas go on giving all the signs of gradually consolidating their hold on the country outside Kathmandu. They have recently lifted their latest blockade, or so news reports suggest. But that still does not make it certain that peace is any nearer. If anything, the prospects for a peaceful end to the crisis recedes with every passing day. King Gyanendra, of course, does not understand that. He has settled upon the belief that a ham-fisted approach to the leftist rebellion is the only way of handling the situation. There comes a point in time, though, when even fists weaken and the purpose for which they are meant to be employed goes all awry. Where the use of the military against the guerrillas is concerned, Nepal has already seen that, to no real purpose. And now that quite a few arms-selling nations have effectively told the monarchy that it cannot expect any more military help unless democracy is restored, the king and his courtiers are naturally worried. 
   Conditions in Nepal are a perfect instance of how a regime isolated from its own people finds itself in a quandary. By banning politics and taking politicians into custody, the king has simply pushed the country back by years. The press is gagged and only last week a few newspaper editors were called in by intelligence to explain why they had kept spaces on the front pages of their newspapers blank. Obviously, the question was irrelevant, for blank spaces in newspapers are a clear means of protesting authoritarian measures. The regime in Nepal knows that as well as anyone else. But what was happening in the present case is what has regularly happened in countries where rulers have sometimes begun believing in their own infallibility. It was pure harassment for these editors. And it was, naturally, counter-productive. Every time a regime based on a stifling of free speech undertakes such foul steps, it incurs the justified wrath of the outside world. In all the time since King Gyanendra has been wielding dictatorial power, his government has been without respect and his people have been privy to all the sympathy they need. 
   But such a situation simply cannot go on. With the Maoists nearly at the gates of the capital, the monarchy must rethink its options. One is certainly under no illusions that every step Gyanendra has taken has been aimed not at ensuring Nepal’s future but that of his royal family. Do not forget that one of the principal demands of the guerrillas has been an end to the monarchy to be followed by a constitutional convention to decide the future political structure of the country. By dismissing the civilian government of Sher Bahadur Deuba, the king has only added more fuel into an already raging fire. He has not quite realised that in these modern times, one of the more effective ways of containing such radicalism as that symbolised by the Maoists is democracy. It does not matter how chaotic democracy may be in the initial stages. The fact is that given a choice between freedom and state control, people always opt for the former. But now that the king has grievously wounded democracy, he cannot expect his people to think he offers a better choice than the guerrillas who, of course, remain harsh in everything they do. Besides, there is the related problem of how destabilising things can be in the region if the Maoists do succeed in driving the monarchy out of power. 
   The point now, given all that has been going on in Nepal, is for the world to exercise greater pressure on Gyanendra in order to convince him that he has to restore power to the civilians and ensure the inauguration of a fresh process of democratic governance.
   
   Bush, Egypt, the Saudis
   Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has asked that his country go for direct presidential elections in future. He calls his move a historic one. Maybe it is. But one cannot quite lose sight of the fact that all this talk of direct elections is the result of the crusade US President George W. Bush has launched about democratic openings in the Middle East. There is little reason to think that Mubarak’s thoughts on democracy have come about after deep reflection on his part. The way in which he has ruled Egypt since succeeding the murdered Anwar Sadat in 1981 is proof enough that he happens to be one of those men who have believed in their own indispensability. By now, Egypt should have been a thriving democracy. It is not yet a democracy because of all the ninety per cent-plus vote President Mubarak has been getting, or ensuring for himself, at all the presidential elections he has been through. And while we are on the subject, we cannot quite ignore the fact that the president has of late been busy promoting the political career of his son Gamal, who is already being looked upon by his father’s acolytes as the country’s next president. 
   For all these realities, however, the president’s move towards direct elections is welcome. But there ought to be a caveat here, which is that any future election based on a direct participation of Egypt’s people must be a clear choice between fresh new candidates. It ought not to be one where Mubarak can maneouvre his way into a perpetuation of power or ensure the rise of his child. Any election must come with a guarantee, one overlooked by the international community, of full rights accorded to the opposition. In all the years that Mubarak has enjoyed power, the opposition has had its back against the wall because of the relentless repressive measures the regime has employed against it. That needs to stop if any credibility is to come to Egypt’s projected democratic opening. In much the same way, if there are any new steps towards political opening in Saudi Arabia, one will expect things to improve. Saudi Arabia is one of those places where a systematic stifling of dissent has been a huge stumbling block to democratic pluralism. If the Bush offensive can now begin to yield good results, it will mark a fresh departure for the region. There are hordes of dissidents in Saudi Arabia who have for years been working to promote democracy in their various clandestine ways. Add to that the voices of such powerful, West-based intellectuals as Said Aburish relentlessly arguing for change in the kingdom. The Saudi regime has agreed to have elections, on a limited scale, to some municipalities in the country. That is a process which must be accelerated and expanded to include a bigger area. An elected parliament, a guarantee of women’s rights, a gradual slicing away of the powers of the royals (they are everywhere, in the country and outside) and a free press are the areas in which democracy ought to find a foothold. 
   You might disagree with George Bush over a whole lot of things. But you do have to agree that if he keeps up the pressure on the Middle East on the democracy question, the world might really discover something of fresh new hope about its future. 
   
   Togo trouble
   It seems the regime in Togo has been relenting quite a bit. In the last month or so, its people have poured out on the streets to demand that they be given the right to choose their next president. And then there has been the pressure from outside, notably western Africa, for a credible way of choosing a government to succeed that of the newly dead Gnassingbe Eyadema, who seized power in a coup back in 1967 and held on to it until his death sometime ago. Immediately on his death, his army commanders, anxious not to let go of the privileges they enjoyed under his loving paternal gaze, placed his son Faure Ganssingbe in the presidential chair. That led to an outcry everywhere. 
   It now seems that the pressure from within and without is beginning to have an effect. The new president has already promised elections. But he knows full well that no elections will be free as long as he hangs on to office. Politicians in the neighbourhood, including Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, have made that clear to him. Africa will then just have to wait, until the will in young Gnassingbe and his army totters and finally breaks.
   Talleyrand can be reached at: editorial@newagebd.com