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A Few days after the Constitution (13th Amendment) Bill was passed into an act by the parliament allowing the provisions relating to non-party caretaker government contained in articles 58B to 58E to trespass into the constitution further mutilating it, the previous mutilation having been made by the Constitution (Fourth Amendment) Act 1975, and during the successive military regimes, I came across the draftsman of the 13th Amendment Act at a function at Bangabhaban.
   Seeing me, he came to me and asked, ‘Naimuddin, amendment khana parchhoni? (Naimuddin, have you gone through the amendment?)’
   I replied, ‘Parchhi.’ (Yes, I have.)
   ‘Ki Bozla? (What do you think of it?)’, he again asked.
   I said he had, by the amendment, established a powerless so-called ‘non-party caretaker government’ vesting it with less powers than the powers exercised by the clerks of the Bangladesh Secretariat making the chief advisor, a retired chief justice, the head clerk of the clerks, the advisors.
   He sharply looked at me and asked, ‘How?’
   ‘By suspending the operation of article 48 requiring the president to act, except in case of appointment of the prime minister and the chief justice, according to the advice of the prime minister, during the tenure of the so-called non-party caretaker government, and also articles 141 A and 141B requiring the president to receive a request by the prime minister in writing to issue a Proclamation of Emergency and for withdrawal thereof and vesting the president with more powers than he enjoys before and after the tenure of the non-party caretaker government. You have even vested him with more powers of control over the armed forces, during the tenure of the non-party caretaker government, by inserting a few words in article 61 of the constitution,’ I explained.
   He commented that being a worm-picking munsif, I had not forgotten to pick worms even after elevation as a judge of the Supreme Court.
   I retorted that he was, although a judge of the Supreme Court, had also been a worm-picking munsif and had not come to the Supreme Court from amongst the potato-peeling barristers. (The munsif-judges of the Supreme Court used to describe the briefless barristers who used to appear before the court only for ‘rule and stay’ as potato-peeling barristers. I have, however, great respects for many Barristers, such as the late Syed Ishtiaq Ahmed, Dr Kamal Hossain, Messrs Rafiqul Huq, Amir-Ul- Islam, etc, who are all barristers and also very eminent, rather great, lawyers.)
   The correctness of what I had stated to the draftsman will be explained as briefly as possible in the following paragraphs.
   
   Role of the non-party caretaker government
   The functions of the non-party caretaker government are detailed in article 58D of the constitution inserted by the 13th amendment. According to the article, the non-party caretaker government has only two functions: first, it will purely be an interim government and perform only the routine functions of the government with the assistance of the persons in the service of the republic, i.e. the civil service, but shall not take any policy decisions unless such decisions are necessitated for performing the day-to-day routine work of the government; and second, the main function of the interim government is to render such ‘possible’ aid and assistance to the Election Commission as may be required by it for holding a free, peaceful and impartial election. The non-party caretaker government is not empowered to discharge any other function, far less to concern itself with the election of members of parliament, except providing aid and assistance to the Election Commission as stated above.
   In view of the above constitutional position, the decision of the last non-party caretaker government, headed by Justice Latifur Rahman, to allow US troops movement over Bangladesh territory during the US attack on Iraq was a flagrant violation of the constitution, as this decision involved a foreign policy decision and was by no means connected with transaction of the routine functions of the government.
   
   Role of the Election Commission
   The Election Commission is vested with overall and unfettered powers of superintendence, direction and control in four matters by Article 119 of the constitution. These four matters are: (a) election to the office of the president; (b) election of the members of parliament; (c) delimitation of constituencies; and (d) preparation of the electoral roll.
   The Election Commission has been vested with almost sovereign powers over these four matters and no authority, not even the president of Bangladesh, has any say in these four matters. To meddle with preparation of the electoral rolls or with the parliamentary election by anyone is out of the question, provided of course, that the Election Commission is composed of persons of unimpeachable character, integrity, and fearlessness and will not shirk from performing its constitutional duties and exercise its constitutional powers without fear or favour. It is our misfortune that persons who can be purchased even by allurement of getting allotment of a plot of land at Gulshan, Banani or Baridhara are being appointed as the chief election commissioners and election commissioners.
   The present Election Commission has, from the very beginning (I do not know why), been acting in flagrant violation of the laws and the rules. It is difficult for me to believe that the gentlemen composing the present Election Commission do not understand the laws relating to election. Even a school student will, I have no doubt, understand the provisions of the Electoral Rolls Ordinance 1982, and the Electoral Rolls Rules 1982. The electoral rolls are prepared under the provisions of these two enactments and by meticulously complying with the provisions thereof.
   The Election Commission first cancelled the existing electoral rolls and began to prepare a new electoral roll violating section 11 of the ordinance. According to the provisions of the section, existing electoral rolls cannot be thrown away and the Election Commission cannot undertake preparation of a new electoral roll. It shall only revise the existing electoral roll before every election to an elective body. By flouting the provision of this section, the Election Commission wasted over Tk 60 crore by undertaking the futile exercise of preparing a fresh electoral roll instead of undertaking the revision of the existing electoral roll. Then the Supreme Court intervened and issued a direction to prepare the electoral roll on the basis of the existing electoral roll. Although the expression ‘revision’ has not been used in the judgment of the Supreme Court, the direction of the Supreme Court to prepare the electoral roll for the ensuing parliamentary election virtually means revision. Half-heartedly, the Election Commission began to comply with the orders of the Supreme Court and began to prepare the electoral roll flagrantly violating all the mandatory provisions of the Electoral Rolls Rules 1982, rules 3 to 18 thereof in particular, and finally published this not only illegal but a void electoral roll. The election of the members of parliament on the basis of this void electoral roll will also be illegal and void and is likely to give rise to serious constitutional crisis.
   
   The remedy
   The remedy is to undertake revision of the existing electoral roll. There is still time to do so but it is running out. Immediately, the work of revision of the existing electoral roll should begin in order to save the country from a serious crisis and for doing so, just get rid of the present chief election commissioner and other commissioners. I have no inhibition to say that the present Election Commission’s failure to discharge its constitutional duties alone is responsible for the present crisis in Bangladesh. So, I again appeal to the chief election commissioner and the other commissioners to tender their resignation immediately in the interest of the country.

CALL it a triumph of American understanding, the great American people taking more than three years to wake up to the sordid reality of the Bush administration’s Iraq misadventure.
   If the people of Iraq were to write the script, they would call it a crime against humanity. After all, if a million wantonly dead does not qualify as such, what does? But since it is the United States doing the writing, a more cautious use of words will have to suffice.
   There were other issues in this American mid-term election – corruption, stories of sleaze and scandal in the Republican-dominated Congress – but Iraq was at the top, giving the Republican Party the ‘thumping’ (George Bush’s word although with his gift for verbal innovation he actually said ‘thump-in’) it has received. The Democratic Party controls the House of Representatives decisively and also looks set to win control of the Senate, 51-49.
   Although the polls largely had it right, one person who seems surprised by the outcome is George Bush. You could see it in his post-election press conference. He said the right things but the drawn expression on his face, and his grim attempts at laughter, said it all. He was shaken and for once the White House press corps, which before and after the Iraq invasion had set new records in outright servility, was being somewhat bold. America has woken up but, by God, it has taken its time doing so.
   It bears remembering that in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, more stupid than Vietnam because Vietnam at least had an excuse in the ‘domino theory’ which many Americans believed in sincerely, the Democratic Party also found itself caught in the war hysteria the Bush White House was whipping up.
   True, some leading Democrats opposed the war and voted against its authorisation: among others, Senator Ted Kennedy, the elderly Senator Harry Byrd, Democratic Party chairman and presidential contender in 2004, Howard Dean, and Nancy Pelosi, all set to be the new House speaker, the first woman to hold this position in American history. But they were in a minority.
   Most of the Democratic Party behaved in a craven and opportunistic fashion including Hillary Clinton. The Clintons, husband and wife, are smart. With their eyes on the long-term – a presidential bid for Senator Hillary in 2008 – they swam with the tide, as did most of their party.
   Courtesy the Brookings Institution, I got a chance to meet some Democrats, a few of them important, at a seminar in Qatar in December 2003, nine months after the Iraq invasion. A more sorry bunch of wimps would be hard to imagine, waxing eloquent about extremism but reacting in horror to any suggestion that not only were the policies of the Bush administration themselves an example of extremism, they were also feeding it. President Clinton was there too, delivering what I thought was a stunning speech during which he mentioned every subject under the sun except Iraq.
   Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the UN, actually said that speaking about Palestine and Iraq would be a waste of time. We would be much better off discussing education and healthcare. It was a funny gathering almost meant to show that some of Americas best and brightest, putting on blinkers, were in a world of their own.
   Now these guys are dressed up as the apostles of change. The test of their zeal will be Iraq and we’ll have to see how much of a stomach for real change they have there. In Nancy Pelosi, however, the Democrats have a good leader – sound head, attractive personality, a flair for politics and, perhaps more important, sincerity. Someone who can call Bush ‘incompetent, a liar and...dangerous’ is to be admired. There is abuse in American politics but plain speaking – seeing a lie and calling it one – is a bit out of fashion.
   Ah, I almost forgot. Rummy has at last fallen, after all the mischief he has done in Iraq. Across America can be heard a sigh of relief although I think he is being unfairly blamed as the sole architect of the Iraq folly. Others besides him were pushing for invasion, not because of WMD – all along, they knew it was a lie – but because they thought it was a great idea, part of their plan to ‘redraw the map of the Middle East’.
   Rummy was just one of this demented cabal which included Cheney, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, even Khalilzad, and a whole string of other luminaries. But as the man responsible for the war’s management, it’s only proper that he should be the first to go. Light rest the ashes of disgrace on his head.
   But the US can sort out its own problems. The most remarkable thing on display in this election has been the American ability for course-correction. What about smaller fry like us who have been holding on to the Bush administration’s coattails?
   It has been a bad time for Bush supporters generally. Jose Maria Aznar lost out in Spain, Silvio Berlusconi out of power in Italy, while Tony Blair, loyalist knight of all, on the verge of becoming history, his ride into the sunset proving to be a long one but a ride into oblivion nonetheless.
   But it must also be a nervous time for Bush satellites as they contemplate the future: Hamid Karzai, the former restaurant owner turned puppet, in Afghanistan, Al-Maliki in Iraq and Gen Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan.
   Karzai is out of his depth, hardly even Mayor of Kabul. The less said about him the better. Al-Maliki, on the other hand, can be his own man, his ideas not always coinciding with those of his American handlers. When in Washington recently – fighting was raging in Lebanon – he refused to condemn Hezbollah as the Americans probably wanted. On BBC the other day I heard someone saying that in private he was scathing about Rummy.
   There won’t be many senior figures in Pakistan scathing about anything to do with the US. Only goes to show how conscientiously our leadership takes its American duties.
   We take responsibility for American missile strikes on our territory and show no remorse when people are killed, as many as 80 in Bajaur only a few days ago. In season and out Gen Musharraf keeps returning to the theme of the ‘war on terrorism’, chanting it as a life-saving mantra, when public disgust with our American involvement is at an all-time high and fears are growing about the costs of following American dictates in our tribal areas.
   Musharraf says he is a popular man and would win a presidential election against Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto hands down. Why doesn’t he give it a try? Why doesn’t he take off his uniform and step into the political ring? Or if he chooses, and his senior generals don’t murmur too much, he could keep his uniform on and still submit himself to an election. He will see the sky, the moon and the stars like he has never seen them before.
   Bush has received a rebuff through the exercise of the popular will. The American people have spoken and he is having to adjust course, Rummy’s scalp the first sign of this. Musharraf says what comes into his mind, and does what he pleases, answerable to no one, subject to no checks-and-balances, because the popular will or rather its exercise lies buried somewhere between the political capital, Islamabad, and the military capital, Rawalpindi.
   The Democrats are not about to advocate a policy of ‘cut-and-run’ but the old days of Camp David-style camaraderie for Musharraf are probably over. As Democrats tighten their grip on Congress, questions will be asked, when it comes to Pakistan, about the peculiar brand of democracy Musharraf practises. At other times this may not have mattered, in a Pakistani election year it will.
   The Bush administration saw nothing odd in Musharraf’s uniformed democracy, indeed finding it convenient as even unreasonable demands were promptly met. The Democrats may have a different attitude.
   Across the arc of Radical Islam which now spreads, thanks in part to the labours of the Bush administration, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Hindukush Mountains, the mid-term elections will be seen as a vindication of the spirit of resistance. Indeed, looked at from a slightly different angle, the Republican Party has been defeated not so much by sleaze, corruption or the response to Hurricane Katrina as by the strength of the Iraqi resistance.
   But for Iraq, Mark Foley could have sent as many sexually-loaded email messages to Congressional page boys as he liked and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.
   Afghanistan is the other place where Bush lit a fire and if it remains on the boil, as all the signs suggest it is likely to, Pakistan’s role will come under closer scrutiny. This makes the future a bit uncertain for the Musharraf regime. It may look outwardly strong but the plates underneath may have started to shift. Who knows?

Following the horrific political violence witnessed in Bangladesh at the end of October, I expressed the deep concerns of the UK Government, and our desire to see free, fair and peaceful elections in Bangladesh.
   I know what you’re thinking. Another day, another call for ‘free and fair elections’. After all the column inches filled, the ink spilled by columnists and commentators, the photos of earnest-looking diplomats and proud civil society members and the TV coverage of pundits and politicians, is it worth it? What does it even mean? And anyway, what business is it of the UK Government to speak out?
   Some might say that a British minister has no right to pass comment on what happens in Bangladesh. It is ‘undue interference’; or worse, it is ‘neo-colonial arrogance’. Heavy words are lightly thrown.
   There is a fine line between interference in the affairs of another country and being prepared to do what’s right, at the right time and engage. Some might say, ‘Give me one good reason why it’s any of your business.’ I’ll gladly offer to do better than that.
   To be legitimate, any democratic election needs the confidence of the international community; it’s not a question of singling out Bangladesh. In any country, those who embrace democracy welcome independent scrutiny and validation of the electoral process as being in everyone’s interests. It offers credibility to whoever forms the next government and inspires trust among the people. Recent election evaluation missions by UN, EU, Commonwealth and US have consistently identified important points for the political parties, Caretaker Government and Election Commission to address to ensure that the elections reach the standards that the Bangladeshi people expect and deserve. Britain will do its part to support these bodies where it can.
   We have a great trading relationship. Britain remains the largest foreign investor in Bangladesh and trade between our countries is worth more than £500 million a year. We’d like to maintain this and the UK minister of state for trade, Ian McCartney, who is planning to visit Bangladesh soon, will no doubt echo this.
   But business and trade cannot thrive on uncertainty and instability; investors will not sow seeds in shifting soils. A stable business climate in Bangladesh needs a firm political foundation, with transparency and good governance at the heart of it. These elections will set the tone. Failure to engage now could set back Bangladesh’s economic development by years and, in a globalised world, that is in no one’s interests.
   The security of all voters, party activists, leaders and the media is an imperative for the forthcoming elections. Violence has no place in a democratic society and political parties must be allowed to campaign freely and peacefully.
   And it is legitimate for the international community to call on the Caretaker Government, law enforcement agencies and the parties themselves to take responsibility and to demonstrate leadership and restraint to ensure this. Human security is a fundamental right and it is a universal one. There is a moral obligation for all countries committed to human rights to scrutinise the protection given to those exercising their democratic mandate. The UK, like Bangladesh, is a member of the UN Human Rights Council and a signatory to UN Conventions on Human Rights and should therefore be prepared to speak out if necessary.
   The Government of Bangladesh is on record as having requested donor assistance ahead of the January 2007 election. As the largest bilateral donor to Bangladesh, it is only right that we help where we can. DFID has provided £1 million to support Bangladeshi NGOs support the electoral process and help cement democratic practices, such as issues-based campaigning, non-violence and accountability.
   This is work by Bangladeshis for Bangladeshis. For a stable and legitimate government, the people of Bangladesh need to be able to have faith in the outcome of the election. The rule of law must apply: no violence, intimidation or manipulation of ballots and an environment conducive to the fullest participation. The need for accountability includes what happens in the run up to the elections as well. Every effort should be made to foster trust in the electoral machinery. The Caretaker Government charged with overseeing the elections should ensure no political bias. Bangladeshis deserve the right to vote. Ensuring this means having an accurate and inclusive voter list, compiled in a transparent and independent manner.
   We are not engaging in order to dominate or to take sides. The elections belong to the people of Bangladesh. But as a friend of Bangladesh, we believe in the potential of the country and its people and we support democracy, stability and security to help further its development.
   Fine diplomatic language has its purpose. But there is a time and place to say what you mean. And in Bangladesh, right now, the time and place for this has never been clearer. What kind of a friend would the UK be if it were not prepared to speak up?
   Dr Kim Howells MP is the British Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

Let the CG function properly

The two parties, the BNP and the Awami League, should stop the politics of confrontation and let the caretaker government rule the country the way it thinks is the best. Such confrontation does not only give the country a bad name, it also harms the business sector of our country. If the BNP and the Awami League have issues, they can vent their anger and raise their problems to the caretaker government through initiating a dialogue, instead of using the streets of Dhaka as the place to do their confrontational politics.
   Tonmoy Islam
   On e-mail
   

The US should learn to talk with governments it doesn’t agree with on principles. It is the reality of life. Talking with Iran and Syria can go a long way in addressing the Middle-East question.
   Nairit Haq
   Dhaka
   

Next on Quick Comments

a. AL team meets president, finds him mum on EC reorganisation: Jalil warns of popular uprising (New Age, Front Page, November 17) b. Khaleda denounces advisers for ‘all talk, no work’: Demands immediate announcement of election schedule (New Age, Front Page, November 17) c. Strong feelings over Pakistan rape laws: The vote by Pakistan’s lower house of parliament to amend laws concerning rape and adultery has been met with mixed emotions, but the bill’s likely impact is far from clear (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6152520.stm).