Editorial
A travesty of justice
WE ARE not really surprised – though certain sections of society may be – that the military-controlled interim government is considering the release of many convicted prisoners who have served half or more of their jail terms, apparently to make jail space for over 31,000 people arrested in a recent mass-arrest campaign, as New Age reported on Monday. We are not surprised because we have observed from the very outset of the so-called ‘law and order’ crackdown initiated on May 28 that this campaign specifically seeks to subjugate political leaders and activists and that this agenda will likely be prioritised above and beyond all other rational or legal compulsions that this government has. The incumbents have, after all, displayed a lot of enthusiasm in rounding up hundreds of political activists over the past months.
While we are aware of the government’s legal power to release detainees on the basis of certain considerations and/or conditions, we have specific reasons to take serious note of the government plan in question, particularly given its proven distaste for the political class in general. The government’s publicly announced plan to release sentenced prisoners from the overcrowded jails in order to accommodate new detainees clearly represents an anti-political policy pursued by the government since its take over in January last year: maligning and repressing the political class in general. If the plan is implemented, what the government is actually going to do is to reward those whose crimes have already been proven in the courts of law. The objective of the plan is also clear: Punishing the crime suspects, most of whom are political leaders and activists, whose ‘crimes’ are yet to be proved beyond reasonable doubts. This is a travesty of justice.
In this regard, we again question the political motives of the government and the draconian nature of the emergency rules that bar the accused in a case to seek bail. Had the rules not blocked the courts’ right to grant bail to hundreds of arrestees under the law of the land, the jails would not have been over crowded in the first place. Instead of doing away with the unjust rules in question, the government has resorted to, and continuing with, its mass arrest campaign that once more denies bail further crowding the prisons. The incumbents have displayed such enthusiasm for charging thousands of people in a single case on more occasions than one in the past. Such anti-people activities need to be stopped.
A final answer to such an anti-political phenomenon is to return to a democratic process and strengthening the rule of law, obviously by way of getting rid of the undemocratic regime of the day. However, an immediate response of the democratically oriented sections of society to the government plan for perpetuating detentions of the political activists should be to put effective pressure on the regime to release the politicians on bail – not to mention lifting of the emergency to restore the fundamental rights of the citizens.
Govt should abandon textbook
price hike plan
THE government is likely to increase the prices of secondary school textbooks by up to 68 per cent, so says a report published in New Age on Monday. The National Curriculum and Textbook Board, according to the report, has proposed that a set of 15 textbooks for class VI should be priced at Tk 507, up 62 per cent from Tk 313, and for class VII Tk 593, up 54 per cent from Tk 385. The price of a set of 14 textbooks for class VIII will go up 42 per cent and for class IX 68 per cent, according to the NCTB proposal. The planned price hike, it seems, is to reduce losses incurred by the textbook board because of subsidy on textbook prices, although the NCTB chairman attributed it to ‘enhanced market prices of paper’.
Whatever the rationale may be, the proposal smacks of the skewed sense of priority of the military-controlled interim government. For a country to prosper, it is imperative that its government put emphasis on improving the standard of education and making education accessible to the citizens. Investment in education also makes economic sense, as it paves the way for faster and better skill development of available human resources. By planning to increase the prices of secondary school textbooks, the government is actually restricting the access to education of a significant section of the population. Already, the dropout rate in secondary education is more than 48 per cent and the planned textbook price hike would only make the situation worse.
One particular argument that the textbook board has set forth in defence of its proposal borders on the absurd. The board supplies papers of the state-owned Karnaphuli Paper Mills to private printers at subsidised rates for the textbooks. A section of the printers sell the papers to the local market to make profit. So, the board argues, ‘if the prices of books are not raised, most of the benefits will go into the pockets of [these] private printers’. In other words, instead of going after the unscrupulous printers, the board plans to punish the entire student community.
Education services are considered one of the two vital social sectors – the other being health services – where the government can and should meaningfully intervene and further the level of human development. This sector or its components, be it teachers, logistics, textbooks, require the government’s active and sincere involvement so that the standard of education improves and the people have easy access to it. Education must be considered as a means to public welfare. The state must not consider printing, publication and distribution of textbooks from a profit-loss point of view. Therefore, the government should abandon the plan to increase the prices of textbooks right-away.
Déjà vu
Bangladesh’s political climate may have undergone drastic changes within the past one year, with the once popular military-installed regime becoming a greater public nuisance with each passing day and the once damned political leaders, corrupt though they may be, growing in relevance once again. Yet, the central plot that has been pursued from the start by the current regime, to decapitate and fracture the two major political parties and thus create a political and leadership vacuum that they themselves would attempt to fill, remains the same,
writes Shameran Abed
THERE is something eerily familiar about the present situation with regard to our two former prime ministers, Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina. It was between the months of March and May of last year that Hasina had gone to the United States to visit members of her immediate family and to seek medical treatment. In its attempt to take advantage of the opening that Hasina’s departure had created, the military-controlled government had tried desperately to force Khaleda to leave the country as well and to prevent Hasina from returning. They failed on both counts. Now that Hasina has again left these shores to seek medical treatment overseas, the government is attempting once more to force Khaleda out of the country. And true to form, the BNP chairperson is doing her best to thwart the regime’s designs. The devious yet ill-advised ‘minus-two’ grand plan, which appeared to have gone into dormant mode for a while, has been put on full throttle once again. However, can the regime expect better results this time around?
In April 2007, this regime was still very much in its infancy and prone to making errors in judgement that resulted from political naïveté and a poor appreciation of history. It also underestimated at that time the resolve and resilience of the two women it was trying to politically neutralise. That it bungled its minus-two scheme, which left the government internationally humiliated and on the back foot at home, was, therefore, not surprising. This regime, from the very beginning, has shown a tendency to bite off more than it can chew and the exile debacle was a prime example of an unelected, military-installed and military-controlled government out of its depth in the political arena.
Now, however, this government, if its own ‘roadmap’ is anything to go by, is entering the home stretch. The stalled general elections to the ninth parliament will apparently be held in the third week of December and local government elections will be held prior to that. Within the past one year, this regime has weathered, albeit very poorly, many storms, literally and figuratively. On the political front, it has had to witness, much to its dismay, its every plan frustrated. First, there was the exile debacle. Then, when the two women could not be sent into permanent exile, they were locked up while the government tried to promote alternate leadership within their parties. They made some progress with the BNP but the plan ultimately failed. The splinter faction of the BNP that the government had sponsored and the Election Commission endorsed is now trying to cosy up to those loyal to the party chairperson, having realised that they were close to committing political suicide by abandoning their jailed leader. The government has also inevitably failed to promote alternative political forces that can challenge and compete with the BNP and the Awami League. Mohammed Yunus, who has charisma but is clearly not a political animal, started off with a series of gaffes that undermined his status and credibility. The rest are non-starters and do not merit discussion.
Yet, this regime appears disinterested to learn from any of its growing list of political blunders. The departure of the Awami League president may have been convenient for both sides for now, but it will ultimately not serve any purpose for this regime. Hasina, as she has proved before, will return when she wishes to. And Khaleda, as she has demonstrated before, will not be made to budge if she decides to stay put. The message that this regime ought to have taken on board from the failures and frustrations of its 17 months in power is that Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina will remain highly politically relevant during and after the next elections, regardless of whether they are allowed to participate in those elections or not, in the country or overseas, incarcerated or free.
But there is apparently another side to the story. The release of Hasina and the planned release of Khaleda, though on medical grounds, are being touted by some, including the new US ambassador, as the beginning of compromise by this regime. Having hit a roadblock during its hyped dialogues with the political parties when both the Awami League and the BNP refused to sit with the government while their leaders were languishing in jail, the government has shown itself ready to compromise, some say, by letting out the leaders in order to bring the parties to the table. But if that were the case, why has this regime arbitrarily arrested more than 30,000 people, mostly grassroots politicians, within the last three weeks, while looking for medical grounds on which to release Khaleda and Hasina? If the regime has taken a political decision to compromise with the parties for the sake of ensuring participatory elections, should the government not do away with the emergency power rules, give bail to Hasina, Khaleda and other leaders while their cases are ongoing and release the thousands who have been arrested but have not yet been charged? From a political viewpoint, therefore, Khaleda's refusal to petition for her release on 'medical grounds' is commendable, especially when she knows that the fate of her two sons also depend upon her willingness to negotiate with the government.
Unless the government is careful, it may have to witness, rather embarrassingly, the re-enactment of a familiar scene. Khaleda, it appears, will frustrate its plans to send her abroad and Hasina, when she feels like returning, will raise an international uproar if the government tries to block her return. Instead of going down that path, which the government failed at when it was popular and will undoubtedly botch now that it is not, the government should look for ways to mend fences with the political parties in an effort to bring them to elections. The easiest way to do so would be to lift the state of emergency, let the parties resume political activity, give bail to political leaders in cases that are bailable and work towards holding proper, free and fair elections, all the while allowing the law to run its course. But that is an unlikely outcome, primarily because it may not ensure for this regime an exit acceptable to it. For that to happen, it will need to politically neutralise Hasina and Khaleda and attempt to fill, either directly or with its surrogates, the resulting leadership vacuum in our politics. All efforts, it appears, are still geared towards that end, even though the ultimate success of this regime’s self-serving political design remains as improbable as ever.
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