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The nation is appalled, once again, at the news that 80 per cent of the question papers of the preliminary test of the 27th Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) examinations have been leaked through the back door of the Public Service Commission (PSC). While those at the helm of affairs continue to remain in the denial mode by ruling out the report as rumour, examinees have revealed to the press that they were given a question paper set during the examination held on Friday last that was identical with the one they had obtained the night before. However, in a bid to clear the name of the PSC in this latest travesty, beleaguered officials have said there has not been any report of a question leak whatsoever. They claim the office had taken foolproof measures to thwart any such eventuality. But such a stand has not helped clear the dark cloud of doubt for the PSC. Already some student leaders have come down heavily on the officials, citing another incident of BCS question paper leakage, and as a result the angry students are now demanding immediate cancellation of the test taken on Friday. The situation has reached such a pass that besides demanding a rescheduling of the test with a new set of questions, students now want the commission to be given a face-lift starting with the removal of the incumbent chairman and other members.
   Leaking out of questions of this extremely important and prestigious examination, one that helps assess the brightest minds for subsequent recruitment into the civil service, will go down as a testament to the unabashed incompetence of the Public Service Commission. This is one institution of the country people in general look up to as the epitome of uprightness that has to shoulder the responsibility of recruiting the bulk of government officials for high positions. But, to the dismay of all, instead of living up to the expectations of the people, it continues to generate unsavoury allegations of corruption, inefficiency and partisan recruitment. It is no wonder that the credibility of the organisation is now under question.
   There is no denying that the legacy of gross ineptness within the rank and file of the PSC, especially concerning BCS question paper handling, goes back many years. It is a deep-rooted malaise and unfortunately no panacea has been found till date to revive the good name of the body. In 2003, similar allegations of question leakage were made at the time of the holding of the preliminary examination of the 24th Bangladesh Civil Service examination. As student protests against the question paper leak reached its crescendo, the PSC had to scrap the examination. The commission denied the allegation but under pressure had to form a three-member committee to investigate the incident. According to media reports, in April this year, the commission decided not to release the findings of the committee but held on to its original claim that it had found nothing wrong with the examinations. This was followed by some more leaks, to the discredit of the PSC.
   The list of allegations will no doubt keep getting longer but that will hardly prove any point unless steps are taken by the highest authorities in the country to purge the organisation of all corrupt elements. The people of Bangladesh want their faith in the PSC restored with immediate effect.
   The latest question leak could be the last nail in the coffin of the PSC.

The ills that plague Biman

That Biman, the national airlines, is plagued by internal problems as well as financial complications has been known to us for quite some time. But it is only recently that we have come to know the extent of Biman’s problems and, looking at them, any person with a rational mind would label it as a state run project desperately in need of emergency care. A local daily, in presenting us with certain facts about the airlines, informs us that Biman’s loss in the last four years alone has been to the tune of approximately Tk 300 crore. This has been incurred due to a failure in implementing decisions on time, a lack of commitment, corrupt administration and unauthorised travelling by staff.
   It is indeed a shame that Biman, more than three decades after it came into being, continues to suffer from an insufficient number of aircraft. It simply is unable to escape a reputation that makes it an airline perpetually late in maintaining its schedule. It is relevant to mention here that, reportedly, at least sixty flights of Biman failed to keep to their schedule in the last four months. Added to this is the repeated failure of the organisation in acquiring aircraft, a fact which has dented its image to a considerable extent. Obviously, with a little foresight we can see that this will have repercussions on the hajj flights which have been facing a situation of disarray for some years. Be that as it may, now that we have the bare truth before us, we know for a fact that the national airlines is submerged in all sorts of conceivable complications. To pull it out of the quagmire will not only need a stern and purposeful individual at its helm but will also require something of an independent body to oversee and regulate its actions. Unlike many other airlines, Biman does not have any advertisement campaign and thus is regarded by many in the aviation world as a C grade carrier. Add to this the infamous game of the scarcity of tickets, which makes tickets for expatriates hard to get though it is known that there are many flights with empty seats.
   However, we believe that brooding over such problems will only push the industry into more chaos and uncertainty. We, therefore, feel that some massive changes need to be carried out at Biman. Privatisation may be an option. In the larger sense, though, what is needed at Biman is a restructuring of the administration and everything that comes with it. But on top of everything comes the matter of Biman employees being motivated into taking interest in their work. That will be one of the ways in which the ad hoc manner in which Biman has seemed to operate in the last many years can be dispensed with. What is most important is that the workers in Biman be focused on making their industry a success. Of course there has been corruption in the aviation industry, but so far we have not seen the airlines employees uniting to protest it. Sadly, this reflects on the psyche of a whole community. Hopefully, though, we will see the authorities taking steps to make Biman the idea it once symbolised – majestic all the way.

The departure of Mir Nasir Uddin from the government should once more be a time of reflection for anyone who takes any interest in politics. In a country where resignation is a rarity and sacking is almost unheard of, it is important that we understand the idea of political departure. And departures, in more ways than one, are one sign of government being on top of things, or trying to restore the balance it has lost. The recent withdrawal of Natwar Singh from India’s foreign ministry is for people in these parts one of the newest instances of how democracies can be served through ministers resigning or being pushed aside in the public interest. In Bangladesh, where quite a few cabinet reshuffles should have taken place in the past four years, all in the interest of efficient governance, instances of powerful people resigning from a sense of failure or from a recognition of moral compulsions have most unfortunately been absent. You could try making the point that AKM Mosharraf Hossain and Mir Nasir have, through exiting from office, demonstrated the power of democracy in this country. But you would be wrong to do that, and for a couple of reasons. In the first place, both of these men tried hanging on to office when it became clear to the country that they should be making their way out. In the second, it needed the prime minister to instruct them firmly on the need for them to hand in their resignations, which was regrettable since the ministers should have gone out on their own.
   When you look back at the history of political departures in Bangladesh, you could be excused for thinking that there has been a whole cavalcade of ministers who ought to have left office at some point or the other, owing to their incompetence or their irrelevance but did not. That says something about the culture that has developed in our part of the world —- and we are speaking of the times dating back to the pre-liberation years. Individuals like Mohammad Ali Bogra have left behind indelible impressions of people being brought in and thrown out at random, with not a bit of their self-esteem being affected by such happenings. Bogra was ambassador to Washington, was summoned home to be prime minister and then sacked and packed off to America again to resume his old job. In the 1960s, he took charge of Pakistan’s ministry of external affairs in the regime of Field Marshal Ayub Khan but died all too soon. Hs successor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, having made a silly show of unhappiness at the accord reached in Tashkent by his president and Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, nevertheless tried to hang on to office. It was only when Ayub Khan gave him the choice of either resigning or being thrown out unceremoniously that he took leave of his job. If there is any tale of arrival and departure truly noted for mystery, it is that of Shere Bangla AK Fazlul Haque. He was pelted with all kinds of abomination by Pakistan’s central government when he took over as chief minister of East Bengal in the Jugto Front administration in 1954. Section 92-A was subsequently applied in the matter of his dismissal. He went out with the halo of a brave man, but in a matter of months he was back in favour. As the country’s interior minister and as governor of East Pakistan, Fazlul Haque proved the truism that there was no last word in politics. But his vacillations hurt a lot of people and his reputation took, if not exactly a nosedive, a certain slide.
   In the free People’s Republic of Bangladesh, there has hardly been a story of resignation that the nation can be proud of. Some of our most agonising moments have come with people we have expected to leave with dignity actually hanging on with all the might they could muster, even if that meant clutching at straws. And yet there has been the other side of the story, which is that some ministers or ministers of state have been made to leave or have gone on their own volition when they should have carried on at their posts. In the Awami League administration under Sheikh Hasina, the consensus was that Home Minister Rafiqul Islam was doing a pretty good job of handling internal law and order. He was suave, purposeful and did not have much time for nonsense. But he too found, soon enough, that he had to make way for someone else. Once Mohammad Nasim took charge of the home ministry, things changed —- and for the worse. But what turned out to be galling for some people is that Rafiqul Islam did not tender his resignation and walk out of the government. He lingered for some months more as minister without portfolio, behaviour which did not exactly endear him to his admirers. The case of Abul Hasan Chowdhury is perhaps a clear instance of how the Awami League failed to judge the worth of all the good people in its government or around it. As minister of state for foreign affairs, Chowdhury was a voice of sophistication and erudition for the country abroad. But then he was stymied in his work by Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad and precious little was done by the Prime Minister’s Office to make things easier for him. And then of course came that embarrassing episode of Chowdhury’s being authorised to arrange a meeting of senior Awami League leaders with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf during the latter’s visit to Dhaka, a meeting that was eventually shelved because Chowdhury had ‘exceeded’ his brief. Abul Hasan Chowdhury has been disowned by his party. The loss is that of the party and not of the man in the story.
   Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, a decent and capable man by any measure, was moved out of the cabinet by Begum Zia and has since been feeling his way around. Chowdhury is one of the very few people in the present dispensation who know how to get their job done. No, he was not perfect, but he possessed the ability and the intelligence to see things through to the end. The commerce ministry has been a messy show under his successor, who in any case should have been shown the door much earlier when he presided over the ministry of home in his previous incarnation. The most sordid resignation story in recent times has come associated with the intimidation exercised on Badruddoza Chowdhury, to a point where he was compelled to quit the nation’s presidency only months after he had been elected to it. Chowdhury’s departure from Bangabhaban was a low point in national politics. The general feeling was, and remains, that he should have stuck it out and let matters take a constitutional turn. A threat of impeachment, on the very weak charge of his inability to have visited the grave of General Ziaur Rahman, would not have worked. Or even if ruling BNP lawmakers and their allies had bullied him out of office, through a motion in Parliament, there would still be the constitutional implications of a departure forced by the sheer anger of lawmakers unable to see beyond their noses. Badruddoza Chowdhury’s resignation from the office of president, in hindsight, was an easy way out. Worse, it established the idea that henceforth our heads of state would be at the mercy of the parties that elevate them to such high office, especially if these parties happen to enjoy a two-thirds majority in the Jatiyo Sangsad.
   Presidential resignations, when they come through a realisation and reassertion of principles, can be enlightening affairs. When Justice Abu Sayeed Chowdhury considered it necessary to vacate the presidential office in late 1973, the move was by and large appreciated by observers of the political scene. His growing differences with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were palpable. The two men parted on terms of mutual respect. But then, less than a couple of years later, Justice Chowdhury came back to government, this time as a minister without portfolio in the administration of President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The day was 8 August 1975. When a week later, on 15 August, the nation’s founding father was murdered in the Khondokar Moshtaque-led coup d’etat by military officers, Chowdhury stayed on in the cabinet. He succeeded Dr. Kamal Hossain, who had opted not to return home from a trip abroad he was on at the time the coup took place, as foreign minister. Chowdhury’s decision disappointed whole swathes of people in Bangladesh, for all the right reasons. There have been other men who have disappointed Bengalis down the years. General MAG Osmany, the brave man who commanded the Mukti Bahini in the nation’s armed struggle for freedom in 1971, demonstrated that courage once more when he defied the formation of the one-party BAKSAL political system and resigned his seat in Parliament. In his farewell remarks, he made it clear that having been a participant in the long struggle against Ayub Khan, he had little wish to see the rise of a Mujib Khan in independent Bangladesh. And yet, only months later, he happily agreed to serve as defence adviser to Khondokar Moshtaque, the commerce minister who had climbed to office through a blood-splattered violation of the constitution. It was a time when the country went red in the face.
   In October 1974, Tajuddin Ahmed ought not to have been compelled to leave government. But when Bangabandhu made it clear he wanted his most trusted lieutenant out of the way, Bengali nationalist politics was doomed. Everything came apart over the next ten months. In November 1975, General Khaled Musharraf should not have underestimated his enemies. His long brooding and longer negotiations over a restructuring of power effectively prevented a revival of secular Bengali politics three months after it had been mortally wounded in murder and mayhem. In the post-presidential election period in early1982, President Abdus Sattar would have done the country a big favour if he had checked an ambitious Hussein Muhammad Ershad. That he did not or could not or would not sapped much of the spirit in all of us.
   E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk