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While the speaker of any democratic parliament is expected to play a crucial role, both inside the house and behind the chair, in ensuring a congenial atmosphere for the opposition to criticise the government for the lapses in serving the people, if there are any, speaker Jamiruddin Sircar seems to have decided to do the opposite. The speaker evidently took a partisan role in upsetting the opposition Awami League that rightly criticised the government for the failure to provide the citizens with regular supply of electricity and water in the capital and elsewhere.
   One hardly needs to be a pundit to understand that a government, elected by the people, loses political legitimacy to continue to rule as and when it utterly fails to provide certain basic amenities like power and water. And this was exactly what some opposition lawmakers pointed out on the floor of parliament on Sunday. But, ironically, Sircar found it necessary for the sake of parliamentary democracy to strike out from the proceedings of Sunday’s session of parliament the opposition accusation of governmental ‘failure’ to regularly provide power and water to many a locality, when the desperate citizens are out to protest against the failure in different parts of the country, including the capital.
   By expunging words like ‘governmental failures’ and ‘resignation of the government’ used by the opposition MPs, the speaker has not only played a partisan role in favour of the political incumbents, he has also proved himself ‘holier than the Pope’. Because, many a lawmaker from the ruling BNP were seen, in the preceding session of the current parliament, accusing certain ministers of failures in serving the people of their respective constituencies. Even on Sunday, a senior minister, Akbar Hossain, reportedly requested the speaker to reconsider his decision to expunge phrases like ‘governmental failure’ and ‘resignation [of the government]’.
   The speaker also expunged the phrase ‘ineffective parliament’! Here, we have to ask the speaker to tell the people as to how would one call a parliament effective when most of its sessions are held with the opposition benches empty. This was equally true when the Awami League was in the treasury and the BNP played the opposition. Moreover, why should an opposition find the parliament effective when its speaker stands in the way of the opposition to call the government’s failures as governmental failure?
   The speaker also found objectionable the opposition objection to the idea of assigning the armed forces with the responsibility to provide civic amenities. It is true that there is no bar in deploying members of the armed forces to work for civilians, but the government owes an explanation to parliament whether the military men are doing the job under civil authority or not. The speaker, instead of asking the treasury bench to explain it, preferred to delete the question raised by the opposition! This is completely inconsistent with democratic parliamentary practices.
   On top of these all, the speaker’s obstructive role against the opposition hardly goes with the repeated calls by Khaleda Zia, the leader of the house, to the opposition to say whatever it has to say on the floor of parliament.

So sayeth Major Hafiz

The commerce minister, retired army major Hafizuddin Ahmed, does not enjoy the reputation of being a maverick; he is rather a pragmatic person, with a penchant for an analytical, serious approach towards a problem. His problem at the moment is apparently the commerce ministry –– an Aegean’s stable the immediate-past commerce minister, Altaf Hossain Chowdhury, has bequeathed to him. But in a discussion with the leading businessmen held at the FBCCI on Sunday, Hafiz chose not to limit himself within the bounds of the commerce ministry but to launch into a diatribe against the political system itself and the failures of other ministries. He was like a loose cannon.
   The details of the discussion, as reported in the Daily Ittefaq, read like an angry denunciation of the current state of affairs by a politico disillusioned with the goings-on in politics. When he criticised the performance of the other ministries, Hafiz sounded more like a fiery opposition leader calling for the blood of the government than a cabinet minister.
   And when he remarked ‘Our prime minister wants to do good (for the country). But some people give her wrong advice’, he appeared to indulge both in sycophancy and condescension towards the prime minister.
   Hafiz has been quoted as saying that ‘there is no other problem in Bangladesh –– the main problem of the country is the BNP-Awami League.’ Such a sweeping remark, demonising both the main ruling party and the main opposition party, coming from a cabinet minister is extraordinary, if not mysterious.
   Hafiz maintained that the commerce ministry has little to do about the price spiral. He, instead, pointed his fingers to the ministry of finance, the ministry of agriculture, the ministry of industries, the ministry of energy and the ministry of home affairs for the anarchy in the market. Is he finding the shoes of the commerce ministry too big for him?
   Hafiz had arguably said all correct things about the ministries. But the question is: did he forget about the concept and practice of collective responsibility of the cabinet in the parliamentary system that is in vogue in the country now? He should be knowing that it does not behove a minister to agitate such issues in the public. Why did he say what he said –– and that too in such strong language? For example, he said: ‘The home minister can kill the syndicate with a bullet. But what can I do?’

There are demands these days in Britain that Prime Minister Tony Blair leave office. The argument being posited is that when a ship is in danger, the solution to the problem is not to have the crew leave but for the captain to be replaced. In light of the very bad results the governing Labour Party has come by at the local elections in the United Kingdom (it has been placed third behind the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats), Blair thought a sweeping reshuffle of the cabinet would do. He certainly did the right thing by removing Charles Clarke from Home and offering him some other department. Clarke, not happy about the manner of his treatment, decided in the fitness of things to quit the government altogether. But the biggest shock the prime minister administered was the demotion of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. He was moved down, to be leader of the House of Commons. That was a replay of what Blair did after the 2001 elections when he shifted then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to the Commons, a position which Cook left after he developed differences with the prime minister over Iraq. He subsequently died while on a hike. The sex-struck deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has had his departments taken away but remains deputy prime minister, in name only.
   Straw has been replaced by the hardworking Margaret Beckett. It is a huge leap for her. She has thus not only been rewarded for her loyalty by the prime minister but also becomes the country’s first woman Foreign Secretary. The cynics, of course, have already begun to ask if Ms. Beckett will prove equal to the task of making and presenting foreign policy for Britain with her lack of experience in the area. That ought not to matter, for the fact remains that in most instances in the West politicians quickly learn on the job. Both Robin Cook and Jack Straw proved adept in dealing with foreign policy. Margaret Beckett should be able to emulate them. John Reid, a trusted ally of the prime minister’s, has been chosen to take over Home and thus move from Defence. All these changes are an attempt by Blair to show that he remains not only in charge but is also capable of taking swift action whenever he sees his government faltering. That is surely a brave attitude to adopt, but given that the prime minister is fast approaching his twilight (he is expected to hand over to Gordon Brown before the next elections), one quite wonders what these changes signify.
    Part of the truth about politics in Britain today is that much of the malaise in which the government is caught has to do with Tony Blair’s style of government. It is not just Iraq. From the earliest stages of his leadership of the country, the prime minister has tried to stamp his individual influence on the government, to a point where he and his closest advisors were soon being described as control freaks. The fact that a few days before the reshuffle Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was roundly heckled at a conference of nurses was proof of the damage the prime minister’s policies have been doing to the government he has led for the last nine years. The reshuffle, for all the drama it has come wrapped in, will not likely have any positive influence on the fortunes of the Labour Party as long as Tony Blair remains prime minister.
   There is too the question of the impact the young Tory leader David Cameron has been having on the country. With him in charge, his party is in an upbeat mood and seriously thinks it can replace Labour at the next general election. That remains to be seen. In Britain, the outcome of local council elections has generally not been reflected at the voting for Parliament.
   
   Hamas has no money
   The lives of the Palestinians are going practically haywire. With government funds drying up, the new administration led by Hamas already finds the going tough. Civil servants have not been paid since February. School teachers have stopped taking classes because they have no money. Part of the reason behind such discontent and chaos is of course the hardline attitude adopted by the West, especially the United States, towards dealing with Hamas. Unless Hamas renounces violence and acknowledges Israel’s right to exist as a state, there is little likelihood of the Palestinians coming by any relief. It does not seem that Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s attempts to have money come in from Arab governments in the region have worked. Last week he met President Mahmoud Abbas to try to hammer out a solution to the problem. The results are not clear.
   A big problem for the Hamas-led government is how to skirt around the refusal of the West to give it money. It certainly did not improve its reputation when it refused to condemn the recent suicide killing in Tel Aviv carried out by Islamic Jihad and instead described it as an act of self-defence on the part of Palestinians. Such an attitude can only worsen the plight of a government and is doing that precisely. Now a new idea about acquiring funds from the west has been making the rounds, which is that the money could be made available to the office of President Abbas, who could then allocate it where it is needed without Hamas coming into the picture. The United States, however, remains opposed to the idea and insists on the prime minister and his organization going for a radical change in policy before any funds can go towards ameliorating the plight of the Palestinians. The problem is therefore complex. Hamas will not bow to pressure. And the Americans are determined to keep up the pressure until Hamas changes course according to Washington’s specifications or collapses as a government altogether. The picture is bleak. There is a clear struggle going on here between politics and morality. The bigger share of the blame for what is happening to the Palestinians is of course America’s. It has clearly opted for a course which is more in tune with a distant past than with the realities of the present.
   
   Bolivarian acts
   The leaders of Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela have decided that an alternative to United States influence in Latin America is in order. Last week, presidents Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales initialed what has come to known as the Bolivarian Alternative to the Americas. The move is clearly aimed at offsetting Washington’s clout in a region which in the past few years has been going steadily leftist. In Chile, the socialist Michelle Bachelet was recently elected president. Brazil has the left-wing trade union leader Luis Inacio Lula da Silva as its president. In Argentina, the Peronist Nestor Kirchner has been doing rather well in power.
   President Bush and his administration can only be worried by this rise in leftist power in a region which once brimmed over with brutal military regimes beholden to the United States. As if to add to the worries of the Americans, President Evo Morales, the first indigenous Bolivian to be elected to the presidency of his country, last week nationalized the energy sector and told foreign operators of the sector to pack up and leave. That has sent the shivers down many backs in the West. And, by the way, Bolivia happens to be the country where Ernesto Che Guevara was captured and murdered by the CIA and Bolivian soldiers in October 1967. It is, under Morales, a refreshingly changed place today.