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A few days ago, I was watching a TV programme featuring a sports organiser and two bureaucrats-turned-politicians who were answering queries from the audience. Among other issues, the failure of the Met office to warn the hapless fishermen on the recent storm and water logging problem of Dhaka were raised. And the gentlemen and the lady gave away their expert comments on those issues without any hesitation.
   This is a very common practice in Bangladesh. Here everyone seems to know the ins and outs of everything. Another gentleman, who is an FCA, wrote an article on water resources sector in a renowned daily recently. The article highlighted his ignorance regarding the sector and was full of statements he thinks right or suits the sector. Among a lot of factual errors, Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) was repeatedly referred as PBD (Bangladesh Power Development Board) in the article. It contained distorted facts and technical aspects wrongly explained by a non-technical person, which is likely to create serious confusion for the readers.
   These ‘experts’ remind me of the story of the barber who used to operate boils with his unclean razor in his shabby dirty saloon. It was a piece of cake for him and he became a very famous ‘doctor’. The doctors decided to teach him about basic anatomy, hygiene etc. Then the barber understood that he was playing with human lives. He refused to play doctor and concentrated on his own business.
   But I doubt ‘our barbers’ will give up so easily, thanks to the media and the so-called band of enlightened people. They will go on manipulating data, say anything and everything that will make them look wise.
   Saif
   Dhaka

While the two number twos of the two mainstream parties have been meeting with a lot of fanfare giving the people a lot to hope for, the two ladies are playing their usual role of the spoilers. The prime minister has left little doubt, if one is to believe what she says, that Mannan Bhuiyan’s hands and lips are tied from accepting the basic demands of the AL, namely the removal of Justice Hasan and the CEC and the election commissioners. Sheikh Hasina, quite equal and more to the prime minister in such manifestations of politics, has asked her party people throughout the country to be ready to come to Dhaka armed with ‘boitha, lathi, etc.,’ to force the caretaker government into inaction till all their demands are met if the current talks fail.
   I can’t help feeling that the BNP and the AL are enacting a great tamasha with the people. While the Sangsad Bhabhan where the two parties are meeting has become a ‘biey bari’ with all the private TV channels in attendance, the talk outside the Sangsad Bhabhan coming out from the two leading ladies and some of the top leaders of the AL are in sharp contrast to the festival mood at the Sangsad Bhabhan. The contrast is eerie, surreal, and portents to something awful in store for the people of this poor country.
   The prime minister’s provocative statements about the AL while the talks are on are very unfortunate. Sheikh Hasina’s call to her party people to come to Dhaka armed is pure and simple fascist tactics which should be condemned by any sane person. Increasingly, I am beginning to be convinced that the time has come for the people of the country to get together and deliver a message to the two ladies that we deeply sympathise with the fact that one has lost her parents and brothers and the other her husband through political assassinations and that for last decade and a half they have repaid their debt by making them prime ministers despite their utter lack of credentials and now they should leave and let the country move forward. Bangladesh’s future is now held hostage by these two ladies’ personal vendetta against each other and the country cannot move forward unless the country is rescued from them.
   Hence from the people, I would like to propose one agenda for our politics and our future; find a way to send these two ladies into permanent retirement with a corollary agenda, that their family would also follow them into their retirement.
   Shahjahan Ahmed
   Dhanmondi, Dhaka