Editorial
Lingering doubt over elections
The report of the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit for December 2007, which has categorised as bleak the prospect of timely general elections in Bangladesh, has summed up many of the concerns that we, at New Age, have raised in the past eleven months or so. The report states that ‘doubts remain about whether the Election Commission can meet a series of deadlines before the polls are held,’ adding that ‘there is speculation over whether the military, or the administration that it backs, will stick to the election timetable.’ We have pointed out to the military-driven interim government time and again since January that its real mandate, as well as the only acceptable exit strategy available to it, is to hold credible and participatory general elections that are free and fair within a reasonable timeframe. However, what we have witnessed in the eleven months or so of this regime’s tenure is a continuous shift of the focus away from the holding of parliamentary elections and towards a government orchestrated restructuring of the political parties and the polity in the name of reforms.
Now, almost a year into this government’s tenure, there is greater uncertainty about the country’s political future than there was at the time of the military intervention that ousted the Iajuddin caretaker government to put the Fakhruddin regime in place. In this time, we have seen neither the implementation of the electoral and administrative reforms that the government and the re-constituted Election Commission promised in the early days of emergency – the Election Commission itself has still not been separated from the office of the chief executive – nor the preparation of a proper voters’ roll based on which parliamentary elections can be held. Instead, what we have seen in these months is the government’s obsession with an ill-conceived and ill-fated ‘minus-two’ scheme, as if the mere ouster of two women will bring democracy and decency to Bangladesh’s political scene. What this government is yet to realise is that the democratisation of state and society will require, before all else, the establishment of the rule of law. By continuously flouting due process in its haste to ‘cleanse’ society, the current government is doing more long-term harm to the cause of democracy than helping to give it a firmer footing.
The report of the intelligence unit, which is a concern of the Economist group, has also expressed its concerns regarding our economic growth scenario in the next twelve months. We have been saying for months now that the climate of fear that this government has perpetuated in the country, and especially within the business community, will have dire consequences for our economy, as investments continue to dwindle and inflation keeps climbing. Add to that the persistently rising international oil prices and the pressures exerted by the recent floods and cyclone Sidr, the economic picture becomes even starker. There is no doubt that the government needs to take steps to revitalise the economy through spurring investments, which will require a regularising of the political situation in the country. Therefore, for the sake of our political and economic future, we urge the current regime once again to lift the state of emergency, the utility of which has been exhausted, and to concentrate all its efforts on holding credible parliamentary elections without further delay.
VGF yet to reach the worst-hit
in farthest areas
Three weeks after the devastating cyclone Sidr hit the coastal regions, relief is yet to reach the countless thousands of victims in the remote off-shore islands. A New Age report filed from Bhola and Charfesson describes the heartrending tales of misery of the people who without vulnerable group feeding cards and assistance for rebuilding their houses. The report mentions that there are allegations of irregularities and nepotism on the part of union parishad chairmen and members in the distribution of VGF cards and allocation of loans for rebuilding houses in different areas of Bhola, especially the estuarial islands. The upazila nirbahi officer of Charfesson has been quoted as saying that they have started distributing VGF cards and allocating loans for house building. The confession is anything but reassuring; rather it confirms the worst fears of the media and the people. If three weeks after the calamity struck they have just started the process, it proves not only the slow pace of work but the fact that the extreme miseries of the people have failed to register on those in charge of relief and rehabilitation. The insensitivity of the authorities were further highlighted when a column of victims in the affected areas who had been denied any relief and were moving in a procession demanding food and shelter, were arrested under the emergency rules. They were not calling for anybody’s ouster from power or even an end to the emergency but were only drawing attention to their own sufferings.
While relief failed to reach the victims, it reached the wrong places, thanks to manipulation. Some well-off families whose houses were partially damaged received house building loans while the more deserving victims whose houses had been completely damaged and were bivouacked under the open winter sky or were huddled together in the ruins of huts, are still waiting for assistance. There is no food, very little drinking water and no jobs. While crops have been damaged, fishermen have also lost their all. Farmers and fishermen alike are suffering without any hope of immediate succour.
Obviously there is something fundamentally wrong with the government’s relief strategy. While it failed to mobilise its own men and materials, its decisions dampened private initiatives. The result is that the worst victims in the farthest pockets have been driven to desperation. It is not yet too late for the government to mobilise the country’s political and social forces to reach out to the victims and to bolster up their self-confidence and morale.
Ever-shrinking space for freethinking
The conviction of four Rajshahi University teachers on charge of instigating student protests on the university campus on August 21 and 22 in violation of the Emergency Power Rules has one ominous message: the space for freethinking is fast diminishing, writes Mir Ashfaquzzaman
THE Dhaka University Teachers Association, at an emergency meeting on December 7, resolved that it would ‘take up tough action programme,’ if the teachers and students of Dhaka and Rajshahi universities who had been detained over the August 20-22 campus protests were not released by December 12. The association also chalked up a two-day programme – its members would wear black badges to work on Sunday and bring out a silent procession from Aparajeya Bangla on the Dhaka University campus on Monday – to press home its demand. The resolution was passed in the wake of the conviction of four Rajshahi University teachers – Moloy Kumar Bhowmik, Dulal Chandra Biswas, Selim Reza Newton and Abdullah al-Mamun – on charge of instigating student protests on the university campus on August 21 and 22, in violation of the Emergency Power Rules. The association has drawn the battle line.
The military-driven interim government has thus far shown little tolerance to any kind of dissent, however genuine the reasons are and whoever it comes from. When the farmers agitated against unavailability of fertiliser during peak cultivation season, the law enforcers were sent in to disperse the ‘unruly’ crowd. When the students at Dhaka University protested against the manhandling of students and a teacher by some members of the armed forces, the law enforcers once again intervened, indiscriminately charging batons, lobbing teargas shells and spraying rubber bullets. And recently, it did not even hesitate to have the police detain 12 persons for demonstrating against shoddy relief operation in the cyclone Sidr-hit areas in the coastal district of Barguna. Then, of course, cases were filed against the protesters on charge of violating the Emergency Powers Rules.
Well, it will be naïve to expect a government, which operates under a state of emergency, to appreciate criticism. However, in case of the government of Fakhruddin Ahmed, the expectations were a bit different. After all, it did assume power with the self-professed objective of upholding and consolidating ‘the democratic system through ensuring a congenial political and social environment.’ The chief adviser has also waxed eloquence when urging ‘the people to carry forward the beloved motherland toward the path of peace and progress by working shoulder to shoulder.’ In a televised address to the nation on August 22, he said: ‘You [the people] are our [the government’s] source of inspiration. Your spontaneous and absolute support and blessings are our driving forces.’
Curiously, the government seems to have been more eager to drive a wedge between itself and the people. It has, on the one hand, slowly but surely isolated itself from the public and encroached upon, on the other hand, whatever little space the people had to have their concerns and grievances heard. Nothing seems to have gone the way the interim government said it would. More people are losing their homes and jobs, crimes, both petty and serious, are rising, the cost of living is going way out of the reach of the common people; the list may go on and on. All this while, the people have been reminded time and again that, under the state of emergency, their democratic rights to the freedom of thoughts, conscience and expressions, to hold meetings, to bring out processions, etc are kept in abeyance indefinitely.
Are these reminders working? Perhaps not. At least not as prohibitively as the interim government would have wanted them to. Even after the government’s strong-armed tactics to rein in the agitating farmers at Nachole, farmers are still taking to the streets over shortage of fertiliser. In fact, as recently as on November 29, farmers of Nabdiganj and Kalyani unions in Pirgachha upazila blocked the Rangpur-Kurigram highway for about two hours. It took intervention by the police and the joint forces to clear the road. And, now the Dhaka University Teachers’ Association has threatened the government with ‘tough action programme’ if the detained students and teachers of Dhaka and Rajshahi universities are not released by December 12.
To say the government has more often than not gone about addressing public grievances the wrong way would be stating the obvious. Its take on the August 20-22 protests, which started from the Dhaka University campus and later spread across the country, could not have been any farther from reality. The protests were an explosion of pent-up public grievances. Period. Of course, it started over what the government termed a ‘trivial matter.’ When the people are forced to bottle up their resentment and frustration for so long, even the faintest of provocation is enough to trigger a wildfire-like protest. In this case, the provocation was anything but negligible. Then, to even suggest that it was part of ‘a plan to destabilise the situation and undermine the government’ is an affront to the people’s inherent urge to be heard in general and the students’ inherently dissenting nature.
What the people in the corridors of power seemingly refuse to acknowledge is that a university – any educational institution for that matter – is a space for freethinking. Here, teachers are expected to instil in their students the sense of individual independence and collective freedom. Naturally, therefore, teachers are expected to rebel when the space for freethinking is being infringed upon, be it in the name of a state of emergency or otherwise. In fact, they would have been doing injustice to their profession had they not taken a stance against the sustained infringement on the space for freethinking during the campus protests between August 20 and 22. Also, teachers are custodians of their students. It would have been morally unjustifiable had all of them looked on as the law-enforces and security forces went about indiscriminately beating up the students, spraying rubber bullets and lobbing teargas shells on them. The convicted teachers of Rajshahi University and the detained teachers of Dhaka University may have done just that.
Seemingly, the government is not conditioned to the concept of freethinking and thus prefers branding any protestations of dissent as ‘plan to destabilise the country and undermine the government’ and any protesters as ‘conspirators,’ ‘instigators,’ ‘evil forces,’ etc. Again, it would be rather naïve to expect otherwise. What is, perhaps, more worrisome is when a court of law endorses such schizophrenia. The court of the additional chief metropolitan magistrate, which sentenced the four Rajshahi University teachers to two years in prison and fined them Tk 1,000 each, displayed a complete lack of historical and political perspective in passing its judgement. In reinforcing the government’s denial about the existence of genuine grievances among the public in general and the academia in particular over the perpetuation of the state of emergency, it may have paved the way for encroachment of whatever space for freethinking that the people are left with now.
In an educationally impoverished country such as ours, teachers, especially those of the universities, are the mainstay of public intellectualism. They are the ones who, by and large, significantly express the public will. The four Rajshahi University teachers spoke, and perhaps acted, against the perpetuation of the state of emergency and the repression on their students.
Regrettably, the court, a la the government, misconstrued their genuine concern over an increasing infringement by the state on the space for freethinking, which universities and other educational institutions represent, as a design to destabilise the country. What can be more crippling a blow to the very concept of public
intellectualism?
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