PRANAB Ghosh Bablu surrendered to the Satkhira judges’ court on June 25 after having been on the run for almost a year and a half. Nearly a hundred and fifty people from Khalilnagar Union of Tala upazila came to see their union council chairman give himself up to law. He has been implicated in a murder case, for which the joint forces detained Shahidul Islam, the head of a non-governmental organisation. According to the annual report of the international human rights organisation Amnesty International, ‘Shahidul Islam, a human rights activist, was charged with murder on the basis of a “confession” by another detainee, Badrul, in February. This charge blocked the release of Shahidul Islam when his detention order under the [special powers act] expired in late February. Badrul retracted his original statement in court, saying he had been forced to make it by police. However, the charge against Shahidul Islam was not dropped and he was reportedly tortured in detention before being released on bail in late August.’
   While Shahidul, implicated in the murder of one Altaf Hossain, a local BNP leader, has been released on bail and the confession was deemed untenable, Bablu’s warrant remains valid and he is still ‘wanted’ by the military-controlled interim government for allegedly having lobbied for the release of Prokash, one of the alleged killers of Altaf at Shahidul’s bidding.
   Riding on his sudden popularity from leading a people’s movement, Bablu ran for chairmanship of the Khalilnagar union council, under Tala upazila in Satkhira and won with a resounding majority in 2003. The people of Tala sub-district waged a movement about six years ago demanding that patches of land forcibly taken over by shrimp farms be returned to them and that local canals and waterways closed off to enable shrimp farming be opened up to enable agricultural activities. At its peak, the movement involved some 30,000 local people. Their efforts paid off and the ruling government agreed to the people’s demands.
   Bablu, secretary of the Tala chapter of the Workers Party of Bangladesh, and member secretary of the 14-party an alliance, a combine of leftist parties, was one of the leaders of that movement. Having completed his master’s degree in history from the renowned Braja Lal College in Khulna, Bablu joined the Shaheed Muktijoddha College of Tala as a lecturer of general history. Bablu was only 27 when he contested the local government elections in 2003 and won some 6,700 out of about 9,000 votes cast. Since early 2007, however, Bablu has not been able to go home at Khalilnagar.
   The last time Bablu was home was in January 2007 before leaving for Kenya with a citizens’ delegation to participate in the World Social Forum in Nairobi soon after the installation of the current regime. He was nominated for the delegation, sponsored by Actioin Aid, an international non-governmental organisation, as a local government leader to share his achievements and the kind of work he did at Khalilnagar Union, particularly about the transparency and accountability he had established through participatory budget preparation process.
   Khalilnagar Union had been one of the first to achieve 100 per cent sanitation in 2004 within almost a year of Bablu’s election and soon after the government announced its target of ensuring full sanitation within 2010 as part of the Millennium Development Goals. During his tenure and before he went into hiding, Bablu was adjudged the best union council chairman of Bangladesh three years in a row and received his award from the former minister for local government, rural development and cooperatives, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan. He was also adjudged among the best social workers dedicated to education in 2006. The money he had received was all spent on development activities of the union.
   Khalilnagar union’s literacy is only 47 per cent with high dropout rates. Bablu undertook an initiative to involve the locals with the union’s primary schools. With a number of congregations and assemblies of mothers and guardians, Bablu was able to convince them to raise funds through the school development committees for teachers’ salaries. He was able to appoint five teachers in each of the primary schools of the union. Through Bablu’s contacts he managed to get the Christian Service Society, to run an eye camp and tooth camp at the union, where people were given free spectacles and could have some operations done.
   But perhaps the most notable work that Bablu has done in his union is to ensure transparency and accountability of the public representative’s office and expenditure of funds. The last available budget of Khalilnagar union (2006-2007) outlines the progress, achievement and reasons of failure of previously planned development activity in reasonable detail. Not unlike the national economic survey, Khalilnagar’s budget document provides an outline of different sectors in the union including the descriptions of development work to be done next year. Quite unlike the national budget, Khalilnagar union’s budget is formulated by the people of that union with consultations at each ward and development projects selected according to the people’s priority. The people can also hold the union chairman accountable regarding certain projects.
   It is this participatory budget preparation process and transparency that secures spontaneous involvement and enthusiasm of the people in their local government. The sincerity and earnestness of these publications of the Khalilnagar union is evident from the candid admissions of failure and gratitude to the people for their efforts for every little achievement. There have been a number of campaigns in Khalilnagar promoting education, sanitation and clean drinking water. The union council held discussions on child marriage, women’s repression and dowry.
   During his tenure Bablu’s approach to governance attracted the attention of a number of non-governmental organisations. Bablu was nominated the central convener of a pro-people union council platform organised by Action Aid in 2006 with the goal of institutional development of the union councils of Bangladesh. The Khalilnagar Government Primary School is among the eight case studies included in ‘Halkhata’, a yearly report on primary education published by the Power and Participation Research Centre, a non-governmental organisation previously headed by Hossain Zillur Rahman, currently the commerce and education adviser, also the lead author of Bangladesh’s first Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper.
   It is perhaps because Bablu embodies the essence of the democratic spirit that the nation desires and expects from public representatives that distinguishes him as an elected office bearer. At a time when citizens in the urban centres demand and urge that the central government introduce participatory budgeting without being heeded at all, a small union very much on the periphery of Bangladesh’s power structure has managed to at least take a few fumbled steps towards such an inclusive system. At a time when even the urban elite demand more transparency and accountability of public office bearers, at Khalilnagar union voters get the opportunity to ask of their chairman why a certain road was not built and where the funds were spent. That is, of course, if it has already not been explained in the annual report published by the union council.
   The last time that Bablu saw his son Aurgho, he was only a few months old. Aurgho has most likely learned to walk during the time that his father remained underground. Aurgho’s gibberish must have turned into coherent strings of words. Bablu has not had the joy of watching his son learn to walk or hold his hands to steady the wobbly feet. Bablu has not had the joy of watching his son learn to how to walk or hold his hands to steady the wobbly feet. It is not just a case of a father being forced to remain away from his son. A responsible public representative has been forced to stay away from his constituency and, in the process, not allowed the scope to further a democratic process that is at the heart of this republic.

THEY call it the new French revolution, and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to shake up his country’s defence structure and policies are a radical departure from the past. Yet at the heart of the hyperactive leader’s new vision lies a riddle. The man dubbed by many of his countrymen as ‘the American’ for his professed love for the American way of doing things, stoops to conquer. His methods are different but he remains at heart a proponent of French exceptionalism enshrined, above all, in Gaullist philosophy.
   President Sarkozy has proposed to cut his country’s armed forces by 54,000 in the next six to seven years, retire old heavy equipment and focus on 21st century threats from terrorism, nuclear proliferation and unstable developing countries. The focus will be on better intelligence gathering capabilities, space assets, drones and mobile forces. The French aim to have 30,000 troops to be able to be deployed in combat for six months.
   The most controversial of the new French proposals is the promise to reintegrate France into NATO’s military structure, perhaps next year.
   One of the most iconic post-World War II moments was General Charles de Gaulle’s decision to leave the Cold War organisation’s military structure in 1966 to protest against its domination by the United States, in league with Britain. Since then France became a licensed dissenter in the Western camp.
   President Jacques Chirac toyed with the idea of returning to NATO’s military structure during Bill Clinton’s presidency, but gave up the attempt because Washington was unwilling to pay the price of having French generals in senior command positions. President Sarkozy’s present plan is better thought out and starts with the premise of declaring an ostentatious friendship for the United States.
   The French president has spelled out his motto: ‘The more we are friends with the Americans, the more we can be independent.’ Indeed, he is demanding an independent defence planning structure for the European Union, once vociferously opposed by Washington.
   His plan is for a strong France in a strong Europe and he hopes to energise the failing European Defence and Security Policy by proposing an initial six-nation force of 10,000 troops contingents by each of the six – the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain – who would promise to spend at least two per cent of their GDP on defence.
   American happiness over President Sarkozy’s defence activism might have become less ecstatic, but the US state department has welcomed the new proposals on the assumption that strengthening European defence serves Washington’s larger objectives. In fact, Britain, the only other serious EU military power, has expressed greater reservations on the French European plans because, psychologically and otherwise tied to American apron strings as it is, it smells an independent European defence policy. The French objective, now marred by the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty promising ‘permanent structural cooperation’, is to build a European pillar in NATO.
   President Sarkozy faces formidable problems in selling his new policies at home.
   Cutting troops is never a popular measure, and although his goal is to put the money he saves on buying better equipment and making his troops more agile and equipped with newest weapons, a number of generals has already come out in opposition. Two Socialist members resigned from the committee framing the defence white paper.
   Apart from Britain’s suspicions, the newer members of the European Union, the former Communist states, are inclined to view President Sarkozy’s decision to rejoin NATO’s military structure as a Trojan horse. Although they get their bread and butter from the EU, these states lean on the US in seeking security assurances.
   Indeed, President Sarkozy’s conditions for reintegration with NATO are the same as Chirac’s.
   He seeks US acceptance of an independent European defence capability and a leading French role in NATO’s command structure. The American attitude has changed because it desperately needs a greater European defence effort with its own troops overstretched, and here is a European leader not only singing American praises but agreeing to send some 700 additional troops to Afghanistan to fight in the most dangerous eastern areas, unlike the war-shy German troops.
   Despite the uphill struggle President Sarkozy faces in selling his defence strategy to his countrymen and Europe, there is inherent logic in most of his proposals. The last French defence review was undertaken 14 years ago and the post-9/11 world is strikingly different. Second, France is simply not in a position to fight significant wars alone. Third, the new threats it faces need new policies.
   President Sarkozy has, in effect, retained the essence of Gaullism while abandoning its rhetoric.
   For instance, he foreshadows the shutting of most French bases in Africa opting for more combined European interventions than the traditional bilateral efforts. He has posed the threat of terrorism as the most potent of the new challenges facing his country. But in the traditional Gaullist mode, he has refused to give up command over French troops for a long duration even in peacetime and the country’s nuclear arsenal remains under exclusive French command.
   President Sarkozy has shown great capacity to roil placid waters. Imagine the brave new world the European Union sought to build not so long ago. It promised to give the world 60,000 troops able to be deployed in a combat zone within a year. Several deadlines later, such a force is nowhere on the horizon. The French President is now attempting to reach this goal by apportioning an equal burden on six major EU nations. In essence, France and Britain are the major military powers in the grouping, underlined by the St Malo agreement concluded during Tony Blair’s time.
   The dissonance of views and outlook between the two will remain a serious problem.
   President Sarkozy’s journey to reach his goal will be monitored with interest on both sides of the Atlantic and in the rest of the world. For a change, he is hogging the world’s headlines for reasons of state.