Editorial
Mere admission of failure to
rein in prices not enough
Two advisers to the military-controlled interim government, in separate forums in the capital city on Monday, acknowledged that the prices of rice and other essential commodities have spiralled beyond the affordability of the ordinary people. The food and disaster management adviser, AMM Shawkat Ali, told a seminar on ‘Food Security in Bangladesh’ that ‘rice prices have reached unbearable levels in recent times,’ while the commerce adviser, Hossain Zillur Rahman, when talking to journalists on the sidelines of the South Asian Sociology Conference, said prices of some essentials have become ‘sensitive’ for the ordinary people. Whereas Shawkat Ali suggested production of ‘rice and other grains on fallow land to lessen food imports’ and thus keep the prices down, Hossain Zillur was less forthcoming. The government, said the commerce adviser, is examining the factors that make the market unstable time and again and ‘will come up with fresh strategies in a day or two to keep the market stable’.
We do not know what strategies the government would churn out ‘in a day or two’ and we are not particularly too keen to find out because, as we have written in these columns time and again, the cure to market volatility lies in adequate and uninterrupted supply, effective and sustained monitoring, and market intervention as and when required. Needless to say, the interim government has repeatedly failed on all three counts in the past one year or so of its tenure despite timely warnings from relevant experts and also the media. The current spate of price spiral of essential commodities, especially rice, has been due largely to the lack of foresight and homework on the part of the government.
True, the back-to-back floods and cyclone Sidr in 2007 damaged standing crops on large swathes of land and contributed to production shortfall and subsequent strain on the government’s buffer stock. True, the prices of food grains on the international market have climbed steadily and a number of major food producing countries have imposed certain restrictions on export to ensure internal food security in the face of such market volatility and also a dwindling global food stocks. However, it is also true that the government was warned of the shortfall of food grains, first by the Asian Development Bank and then politicians and leading economists as early as in November 2007. Had the government acted then and tried to replenish its buffer stock we might not have faced the shortage that we are in now.
Now that the government has owned up to its failure to keep the prices of rice and other essential commodities within the reach of the ordinary people, we would expect it act fast and act in earnest. In the short term, it has to ensure adequate import of food grains and other essentials and also subsidise the prices to keep them within the affordability of the majority. Here, it is imperative that the government take confidence-building measures so as to involve the private sector in the import of essentials. In the long term, as the food adviser suggested on Monday and as we have said many times before, it has to take effective steps to expand food crop acreage and ensure adequate agricultural inputs at subsidised rates for the farmers to make such expansion worthwhile.
Finally, the government should realise that not only the prices of rice and some other essentials but many other factors, e.g. lack of employment, have also made life for the majority ‘unbearable’. It should also realise that it is primarily the government’s ineptitude at best and indifference at worst that has led to such an ‘unbearable’ situation and that things have reached such a pass that it itself has become ‘unbearable’ for people at large.
Jumbo jet or jumbo debt?
We understand and acknowledge the requirement of a national flag carrier in the international system of nation states as far as Biman Bangladesh Airline is concerned. It is also understandable that the state must make rationally adequate and necessary expenditures as and when needed to keep the flag carrier in operation. The national carrier should also become such an enterprise that exemplifies transparency, honesty and profitability, all of which appear to have been amiss in Biman’s case from the very onset. Biman has become synonymous with corruption, mismanagement and inefficiency that must be done away with first in order for it to turn into a source of pride for the country and its citizens.
The Biman board’s recent decision to buy eight jumbo jets to be delivered between 2013 and 2017 for $1.26 billion, as reported on Tuesday, therefore, begs further explanation. Although the reports quote the adviser in charge of aviation saying the decision was independently taken, his assurance hardly quells apprehensions as to what recommendations were made by the World Bank in this regard. Furthermore there remain questions about the source of funds, which comes out to about Tk 1,300 crore, 15 per cent of which Biman is required to pay, and who would eventually bear the burden of the interest in case the flag carrier fails to become viable, as has been the case on numerous previous occasions.
As regards its viability and plan of operations, there must be detailed projections by the board and rational justification for the high volume of expenditure. It has been the case in the past that purchases of airlines involving large amounts of funds have been the source of massive corruption and irregularities that subsequent governments have made public. But there have hardly been effective investigations into previous instances of corruption in Biman leading to conviction of those guilty.
The military-controlled interim government should rightly question the irregularities of Biman’s finances during the previous regimes and provide thorough information explaining how the planned investment would be fruitful and worthwhile turning Biman into a profitable enterprise in the near future as it is clear from the reports that envisaged expansion of its fleet would not take place for another five years.
Pending a full public disclosure regarding the affairs of Biman, its present and future, the current regime will also be subject to the same allegations – lack of transparency and accountability – that are levelled at the previous regimes.
Blockade and pounding Gaza:
a crime against humanity
Perhaps there is a realisation in the US that the more bombing of helpless Gaza residents is prolonged the more untenable will be the position of the moderate West Bank ruler Mahmoud Abbas with whom the US prefers to deal. Mahmoud Abbas who suspended peace talks with Israel has nevertheless said he will resume talks only after a truce puts an end to violence. But without any effort to rein in Israel all peace negotiations are bound to fail or prove short-lived, writes Zakeria Shirazi
The Gaza Strip has been described as the world’s biggest open prison. But prison population is not bombed and killed. That way Gaza is a unique example of human helplessness pitted against the arrogance of power. Routine pounding of the civilian population continued for a week and dozens of people lay dead almost every day while the world looked on unmoved, except for occasional mildly worded censure. At the end of last month Israel mounted a five-day military incursion into northern Gaza which killed at least 120 people. Clashes intensified after Hamas fighters fired rockets into Ashkelon, a city of 120,000. However, casualties on Israeli side were negligible.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, accused Israel of ‘disproportionate and excessive use of force’. The cautious and restrained note of the denouncement is remarkable. As if it is only the degree of violence that is unacceptable and a more proportionate and discreet use of force would have been alright. No warning, no call for action, no reference to the series of flagrant violations of UN resolutions committed by this Zionist entity and its expansion and consolidation of past aggressions. And why blame Ban Ki-moon alone. The fellow Muslim country Turkey which had offered to mediate in the peace negotiation with Israel gave its reaction in similarly muted terms. An indulgent tone is unmistakeable in the words of the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, when she says, ‘I have told the Israelis that when they are engaged in defending themselves they need to be aware of the effects of those operations on innocent people.’ No one challenged her by asking how Israel can be a defending party on an occupied land. Only some humanitarian and charity organisations were a bit more forthright in their indictment. And the bombing is sometimes referred to as ‘response’ implying that there is a primary offender which has provoked the killing. Semantic inventiveness of the Zionism-controlled world media is amazing. The media blitz has almost made the words Palestinians and terrorists synonymous.
It is clear that none wants to antagonise the world’s sole superpower whose president has stooped to become a poodle of the Zionists. The victims of the bombing are mostly civilians who include women and children. One of the victims was a 21-month-old baby girl. Some of the victims were individually targeted. This state terrorism is accompanied by dire threats of a more devastating offensive. The Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said ‘nothing will prevent us from continuing operations to protect our citizens’. His defence minister Ehud Barak went a step further by threatening a broader Gaza operation. The Palestinian leadership based in the West Bank suspended the US-sponsored peace talks with Israel. The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, denounced the deadly Israeli attack on the Gaza population as ‘more than a holocaust’. It is strange, however, that while the siege was on, Abbas met the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, but refused to talk to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Even if the deadly helicopters, jets and the remote-controlled drones does not whang overhead and there is no killing, a slow death inevitably awaits the Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million residents. The Israeli blockade has resulted in acute food shortage, shortage of medicines, closure of factories and mass unemployment. This is collective punishment, a crime listed in the fourth Geneva Convention. Gaza is a very densely populated swath of Middle East land. A massive human tragedy is being enacted in a place which is the focus of world attention as a vital link in Middle East peace. British humanitarian agencies which include Amnesty International noted that the situation in Gaza was the worst in 40 years and called for talks with Hamas in an effort to end the conflict. Israel went to the extent of blocking shipment of food by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Last January the UN Security Council could not pass a resolution condemning Israel for the blockade because of the threat of US veto. To reduce its overwhelming dependence on Israel for essential supplies Gaza had the option of forging broader economic ties with Egypt. Driven to desperation the people of Gaza did breach the wall on the Egyptian border and enter Egypt with the tacit approval of Egyptian authorities. Commenting on this bold act of a desperate people the liberal Israeli commentator and peace campaigner Uri Avnery writes, ‘no power can stand up against a mass of people that has crossed the border of despair’. But then Egypt too cannot go too far in bailing out a beleaguered people. It is a big recipient of US aid and if it antagonises the Zionists too much the volume of aid may be affected. In the circumstances Egypt did the right thing by snatching a diplomatic initiative to end the violence.
The region was visited by the US president, George W Bush, and later also by his secretary of state. And yet Israel is getting away with all its atrocities. Because of the Israeli embargo electricity generation has fallen sharply and hospitals are facing power cuts for 12 hours a day. Incubators for prematurely born babies and dialysis machines had to be switched off. Water and sewage infrastructure is on the verge of collapse posing a serious public health risk in an overcrowded region. Unemployment has soared as 75,000 of the 110,000 who were employed by the private sector have been rendered jobless. Most of Gaza’s industrial activities had to be suspended due to the ban on imported raw materials and the blocking of exports. In recent months vast segments of the population have sunk into grinding poverty, which is all the more tragic in a community which possesses a record proportion of highly educated and skilled manpower. Hamas, which is the effective Palestinian authority and de facto government in Gaza did make a peace overture to Israel last year, and again last January. Hamas leaders had stated that it would stop firing rockets if Israel stopped its incursions into Gaza and targeted killings and called off the blockade. After Bush’s visit, the blockade was tightened further. Speculations are that the US president exhorted Israel to bring down the Hamas rule by whatever methods.
The road map is in tatters. However, diplomacy can still save the situation from deteriorating further. The efforts of Egypt to secure a truce need all encouragement. At this moment both sides have reportedly refrained from their offensive moves. According to latest reports, talks have been held between Hamas delegates and American and Israeli envoys. Perhaps there is a realisation in the US that the more bombing of helpless Gaza residents is prolonged the more untenable will be the position of the moderate West Bank ruler Mahmoud Abbas with whom the US prefers to deal. Mahmoud Abbas who suspended peace talks with Israel has nevertheless said he will resume talks only after a truce puts an end to violence. But without any effort to rein in Israel all peace negotiations are bound to fail or prove short-lived. Even while a fresh move for a truce has been initiated, Israel has announced a new plan to build a settlement in the annexed eastern part of Jerusalem. This threatens to make a mockery of any fresh diplomatic move for a lasting peace. It has always been observed that concessions make Israel more intransigent. The hint that Hamas might consider the recognition of Israel after the latter’s withdrawal to pre-June 1967 borders failed to restrain Israeli aggressiveness.
The peace-loving world can have no sympathy for terrorists of any colour and variety, be it Hamas or any other party or government or outfit. The key to almost every political crisis lies in sustained diplomacy and negotiation. But it is not up to Israel to pronounce a moral judgement in this regard as this is a country which has elevated terrorism into a state principle. First of all it should stop resettlement and killings and lift the blockade. Peace talks can then be resumed but not without Hamas as a party. The so-called terrorists and extremists are being accepted as partners in peace negotiation almost everywhere in the world – Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Then why not in Palestine? Engagement with extremists and not reprisal has produced result as the very process of engagement tends to exercise a modifying influence upon militancy.
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