Editorial
Interim govt’s latest trick
It comes to us as little surprise that a case has been filed against Arafat Rahman, the youngest son of the immediate-past prime minister and chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Khaleda Zia, on charge of extortion. He is perceived by the people in general to have abused his mother’s good office to amass substantial wealth and, one must say, there are visible evidences that reinforce such a public perception. The case of Arafat or, for that matter, of his elder brother Tarique Rahman, is nothing new. Such abuse and misuse of familial or partisan ties are galore in the brief history of the country. Since independence, successive governments, elected or otherwise, have indulged in favouritism and nepotism in the absence of any democratic accountability. Therefore, the case against Arafat and such others, if investigated and prosecuted efficiently and effectively within the ambit of law, can go a long way towards establishing a semblance of democratic accountability in the corridors of power.
However, the nature of the case, especially its timing, come as did hours before Arafat was to fly off to Singapore with his mother for treatment, raises the suspicion that it has to do more with keeping Khaleda and Sheikh Hasina under pressure than ridding the political process of corruption. Notably, Hasina was sued a day after she had publicly criticised the government. Intriguingly, extortion seems to have become a recurring theme vis-à-vis the interim government’s much-vaunted and much-publicised campaign against corruption. Almost all the political bigwigs that it has detained since its assumption of office have been implicated in one extortion case or the other. Interestingly still, the cases against Hasina, Tarique and Arafat have been filed by people who seem to have been beneficiaries of certain shady deals that the supposed abuse or misuse of power brought about. So, they are no less culpable and no less liable to prosecution.
What’s more, we are afraid that, when the state of emergency is withdrawn, the political order restored and the rule of law re-established, all these cases could very well fall by the wayside, flawed and weak as these appear to be. Then again, there is the possibility that the complainant themselves will rush to the courts, claiming that they field these cases under duress in the first place. If it so happens, in all likelihood, the people who did abuse and misuse their political influence for personal interest will go scot-free, which, in turn, might very well embolden them to resume their corrupt practices with renewed vengeance.
If the government is serious about corruption by political bigwigs, it should thoroughly investigate the cases filed against them, frame specific and foolproof charges, and prosecute. On the other hand, if its self-professed campaign against corruption is a camouflage for some hidden political agenda, it can be certain that it would eventually backfire.
Law adviser’s comments
The law adviser to the military-backed interim government, Mainul Hosein, said on Wednesday that the imposition of the state of emergency ‘does not harm anybody’, as reported in the New Age on May 17. While we are not surprised in the least at the comments made by the law adviser — he has on previous occasions also defended the imposition of emergency — we are nonetheless disappointed with his failure to appreciate the general sense of fear that is inspired by the imposition of emergency and the vulnerability that is felt by ordinary citizens because their constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights are suspended.
The freedom to think and speak without restriction and the right to be able to assemble and protest, even against this military-backed regime if the citizens of this country so wish, are essential for the democratisation of society, which apparently is what the current government is after. However, the government ought to realise that there is a clear paradox in its stated aims of facilitating a healthy political process and a functioning democracy on the one hand and its insistence on sustaining the suspension of fundamental rights of the citizens on the other. The comments of the law adviser only demonstrates his present isolation from society at large and his inability to gauge the anxieties and sentiments of the people, being a member of a government that was neither elected by the people nor is accountable to them for its actions. The adviser should realise that he belongs to a highly select group of people, the members of the interim administration and its military backers, who are unharmed by the suspension of fundamental rights, and, therefore, is in no position to comment on the consequences of the imposition of emergency.
It is also rather ironic that the law adviser made the comments on the same day that 15 influential United States senators, including Hillary Clinton and Edward Kennedy, sent a letter to the chief adviser to the interim government urging him to lift the state of emergency and to restore full civic and political rights of all citizens. The senators have gone even further in asking that the ban on political activity be lifted as well. We take this opportunity to once again urge the government to restore the citizens’ fundamental rights, without which, we feel, the path to democracy cannot be embarked upon, and to allow political activity so that necessary reforms within the political parties in particular and the political process in general can be brought about.
The perils of poor performance
Hasina and Khaleda ran the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party as personal
fiefdoms. The emergency’s shock and hostile public opinion have forced both parties to talk of ‘reform’. But this seems to be more lip service than mature attempts to sort things out organisationally to show the public that the Awami League and the BNP have rectified past shortcomings and are equipped to handle future challenges, writes Mumtaz Iqbal
HOW have we dealt with political leaders with questionable performance compared to those in other countries?
Politicians know by instinct and experience public opinion is a fickle servant and a bad master. What matters is performance. This lubricates history’s verdict.
A major project executed successfully rightly makes its sponsor popular. A botched enterprise generates dismay and antagonism, even loss of office. Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.
The Chinese Communist Party rates Mao Zedong 70/30 (70 per cent right, 30 per cent wrong). This recognises his immense contribution to the PRC’s founding in October 1949 but censures him for the fiascos of Thousand Flowers Bloom (1956); Great Leap Forward (1958-60); and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1965-76).
Jawaharlal Nehru’s sterling nationalist and anti-colonial credentials are clouded by the 1962 NEFA debacle. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s peerless contribution to our independence is offset by his lacklustre administration (1972-75), especially the quixotic BAKSAL experiment.
Blair’s resignation last week after 10 years as the prime minister results from the unpopular Iraq war that overshadowed his skilful stewardship of the economy, education and health services.
A big bad coin drove out good ones.
Blair’s misfortune is piddling compared to the spectacular erosion of Bush’s standing. On May 1, 2003, he stood invincible on the USS Abraham Lincoln’s flight deck intoning Mission Accomplished, with a staggering 80 per cent approval rating.
Four years later, Iraq has flattened Bush’s image (30 per cent rating) and legacy, making him a lame and dead duck.
These examples show, irrespective of a country’s politics, that while nothing succeeds quite like ‘success’, nothing’s quite as abject as ‘failure’. Decisions have consequences. A bad decision coupled with poor execution invites geometric, not arithmetic, disapproval.
In functioning democracies, public opinion gathers steam to reject a failed and illegitimate project, especially when twinned with arrogant governance (the US and the UK over Bush and Blair’s Iraq policy).
Rejection in totalitarian states is posthumous (the PRC over Mao and the USSR over Stalin —see Khrushchev’s 20th party Congress speech 1956). Critiquing a living dictator is hazardous.
Compared to the punishment public opinion has inflicted on Blair and Bush, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia have got off lightly. They are down but not out, remain leaders of their embattled parties and nurse comeback ambitions.
Khaleda oversaw a horribly corrupt regime. Her eldest son and many of her and his close associates have been arrested on criminal charges. Media reports suggest some have admitted guilt.
Khaleda maintains a deafening silence about these accusations. In a working and transparent democracy, outraged public opinion would have forced her from public life.
While public outrage is there, Khaleda ignores it. The government’s efforts to ‘exile’ her have generated a degree of ‘sympathy’ as the underdog.
But whether this is more a reaction against the administration’s ham-handed approach rather than any enduring support for Khaleda is an open question. The BNP will require extraordinary surgery to cure its chronic disease.
Not having been in power, Hasina is less burdened by incumbency’s sins of omission and commission. But her performance in opposition, especially during the dark days of the last caretaker government, and when in power from 1996-2001, raises questions about her leadership capacity and sagacity.
Like Khaleda, Hasina has evoked some public ‘sympathy’ at the government’s abortive attempt to keep her abroad. It is a moot point whether this reflects more a protest against official tactics than durable support for her.
Hasina and Khaleda ran the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party as personal fiefdoms. The emergency’s shock and hostile public opinion have forced both parties to talk of ‘reform’.
But this seems to be more lip service than mature attempts to sort things out organisationally to show the public that the Awami League and the BNP have rectified past shortcomings and are equipped to handle future challenges.
Thus, BNP insiders savage each other. Khaleda’s brother’s appointment as a vice-president of the party has generated controversy. Evidently, dynastic habits die hard. Similarly, the AL general secretary, Abdul Jalil, makes soothing noises about the necessity of internal reforms but under Hasina’s leadership.
This begs the question: can a leopard change its spots? If Hasina and Khaleda are considered part of the problem, can they trigger meaningful reforms? Does cleaning the Augean stables require new brooms?
Hasina and Khaleda rose to prominence on their father’s and husband’s reputations. The public gave them the priceless privilege of becoming prime ministers. They repaid this honour by being poor role models and wrecking national institutions through partisan zealotry.
We dislike dictators and have given them differentiated punishment. Two male despots tragically were assassinated, a third jailed. Judged against this bloody profile, the ladies — elected autocrats both — have experienced relatively benign treatment.
This outcome emanates from a combination of public chivalry and maturity; the authorities’ dodgy legitimacy and the pervasive influence of powerful external opinion.
But it also reveals our weakness as a society that waffles about holding its leaders accountable for their actions and glosses over bad governance.
Hasina and Khaleda’s public life has spanned three decades, the last 15 years in high positions in government and opposition. During this time, the world has moved on. Shouldn’t they? Overstaying guests wear out their
welcome.
It is neither crude nor cynical to recall Sidney Carton’s poignant words on the scaffold: ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.’
Hope springs eternal. Public memory can be fickle, short and mercurial. Either or both ladies may believe, like Indira Gandhi, they only have to hang on to resurge in public life once more, even run the country again, especially if the gamekeepers become poachers.
This would show like nothing else that we are a forgiving people, willing to give our inimitable ladies another chance!
Mumtaz Iqbal is a free lancer
LETTER FROM DELHI
Iraq’s shadow over Blair decade
S Nihal Singh
Perhaps Mr Blair’s greatest mistake was to convince himself that his country’s good, as also his own leadership, was premised on keeping on the right side of the United States, whatever actions the occupant of the White House chose to take. This exercise was not too arduous when his soul-mate Bill Clinton was in office, but in a considerable tour de force, Blair made his number with a very different President George W Bush, a Texan inclined to shoot from the hip. American neoconservative policies gathered pace after 9/11 and Blair acted on his promise to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with America into Afghanistan and the disastrous Iraq misadventure
Is it a mere coincidence that two of the brightest and most articulate leaders of the western world in recent decades suffer from near fatal flaws? Bill Clinton left office after a two-term presidency, a rarity for a Democrat in recent times, after barely escaping impeachment by his country’s Senate for frolicking with a White House intern. And Tony Blair, despite his many successes, choreographed his departure after it became clear that his party and the country would rather see him go after his Iraq misadventure.
It is true that the information and television age makes many demands on a western leader to stay afloat. But judging by the performance of these two leaders, modern times seem to require a nimble mind and nimbler tactics to stay ahead of the pack. And convictions and beliefs must be made to fit into the exigencies of situations.
After leaving office, Clinton has been dividing his time between assisting his wife Hillary in securing her presidential ambitions and doing good work for the tsunami-afflicted and AIDS sufferers. He seems to have made peace with himself, now that the demands of the presidency are behind him. And his histrionic skills and charm have made him a favourite fee-charging speaker at various events.
Tony Blair is leaving office on June 27 and is saying his long goodbyes to fellow leaders on the Continent and across the Atlantic. Political pundits at home are giving their own report cards to the longest continuously serving Labour prime minister. There is a pervasive sense of disappointment that a man who shone so bright after his heady victory ten years ago to bring a rejuvenated New Labour to power should have to leave with the shadow of Iraq perennially hanging over his head.
Perhaps Mr Blair’s greatest mistake was to convince himself that his country’s good, as also his own leadership, was premised on keeping on the right side of the United States, whatever actions the occupant of the White House chose to take. This exercise was not too arduous when his soul-mate Bill Clinton was in office, but in a considerable tour de force, Blair made his number with a very different President George W Bush, a Texan inclined to shoot from the hip. American neoconservative policies gathered pace after 9/11 and Blair acted on his promise to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with America into Afghanistan and the disastrous Iraq misadventure.
Indeed, Blair emerged as the leader rallying the East Europeans, some of them new putative members of the European Union, in a public display of support for the United States against the strong disapproval of the US-led invasion of Iraq by the leaders of France and Germany. The rift in the EU was deep and most embarrassing for the cohesion of the organisation. In a tart comment, President Jacques Chirac said the new members should learn to keep quiet when they must. Despite strong opposition at home, Blair began to give hints that he wished to lever his total support for Bush on Iraq to give himself diplomatic room for manoeuvre in helping resolve the seminal Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the region.
If he was being truthful, Blair was particularly naïve. Across parties, US presidents have always rebuffed any attempt by any other nation or the United Nations to engineer a political solution to the long-festering crisis premised on the sheer injustice of Israelis occupying and ruling over Palestinians while grabbing more and more land for illegal settlements. Israel is a strategic ally of the US and the vice-like hold of the American Jewish lobby precludes the White House from pursuing any policies viewed inconvenient by Tel Aviv. The most embarrassing moment for Blair came when Bush refused permission to ‘Yo Blair’ (on an open microphone at a Group of Eight summit meeting) to go to the region to try to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
The fiction of American impartiality on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been maintained by all US Presidents, by some more plausibly than by others. President George W Bush was the first occupant of the White House to tell an Israeli leader (Ariel Sharon, now lying comatose in a hospital) that Israel can keep major illegal settlements, that Palestinians did not have ‘the right of return’ and that Tel Aviv can redraw the borders. It surpasses reason how a man of Blair’s intelligence believed that President Bush would let him mediate between Palestinians and Israelis.
It has been the United Kingdom’s policy after World War II had enfeebled and exhausted it to maintain a ‘special relationship’ with the United States in order to continue to exert influence around the world. But no British prime minister has brought his country’s strategy to such a demeaning level than Blair. It has seemed that Bush’s often-incoherent logic on Iraq had been spruced up by Blair to be presented as a justifiable policy. Blair received little for his pains because his ability to influence US policy on major issues was insignificant. On one occasion, Bush told a questioner that Blair was pursuing his pro-Washington policies in the interest of his country.
Yet Blair has presided over 10 years of prosperity for Britain (his likely successor Gordon Brown shares a measure of credit) after rejuvenating the Labour Party by stealing Margaret Thatcher’s clothes. The West applauded him for his activism in the NATO-led 11-week air war on Yugoslavia over Kosovo although his theory of humanitarian intervention (later supported by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan) has been tarnished by the Iraq fiasco. But his greatest achievement will remain the new reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. He had worked tirelessly, first by bringing America into the equation; his success lay in working in unison with the Irish Republic’s Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and his powers of persuasion to get two implacable enemies to share bread and office.
Blair retires at a comparatively young age (just when Indian politicians start their political ascent) and has many years of active life left. Apart from combing the profitable American lecture circuit, he will spread his wings far and wide taking in the crisis between the West and Islam. One wonders whether in his quieter moments he will rue his decision to back Bush to the hilt on Iraq. Publicly, he has always declared that he has done nothing wrong even while shifting his ground in justifying his actions from going after weapons of mass destruction to getting rid of Saddam Hussein. In the post-modern age, the best and the brightest have a certain felicity in merging convictions with expediency.
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