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The Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina, former prime ministers both, exchanged pleasantries and spoke to each other at a reception on Friday to commemorate the Armed Forces Day, the first time the two political rivals have publicly spoken to each other in 13 years. As the two leaders shook hands and engaged in animated conversation, surrounded by giddy-looking advisers of the present regime, the assembled guests — made up of the cream of the country’s civil and military elite and with the president, chief adviser and army chief in attendance — broke out in spontaneous applause. The applause symbolises, no doubt, the fact that the political aspirations of the people of this country, including those of the Dhaka-based elite, still rests on the ability of the country’s two top political leaders to develop a working relationship with each other and to steer the country’s politics in a truly democratic direction.
   The apparent thawing of the icy relations between the two leaders comes at an extremely significant time and on a highly poignant occasion. After two years of emergency rule by an unelected and undemocratic regime, the people are desperate for the reinstatement of their fundamental rights and the return of a representative government. At the same time, however, the acrimonious relationships between political leaders and activists of different camps and the confrontational nature of their politics provide grounds for serious misgivings. Against that backdrop, the scene that played out Friday with the two former prime ministers talking with each other in plain view of the public was hugely significant. While we don’t expect the two leaders to now become the best of friends, and though we would not want them to agree on everything, particularly when it comes to policy matters, we would, however, like to see them develop a working relationship for the sake of a democratic polity and in the interest of establishing a democratic order in our country.
   Moreover, the exchange between the two former prime ministers occurred during the commemoration of an auspicious day in our history. The Armed Forces Day celebrates the date on which, in 1971, our armed forces comprising the army, navy and air force came into formal existence and launched an all-out attack on the Pakistani occupational forces of General Yahya Khan. The armed forces fought gallantly in our liberation war to set up an independent democratic state within our borders which would ensure the supremacy of civilian rule, not to establish a military or quasi-military state. The re-connection of the two top political leaders at the heart of the Dhaka cantonment, and the subsequent applause of the assembled guests at the scene of two leaders shaking hands, that too in the presence of the military top-brass, gives another very significant political message: people are no longer interested to endure undemocratic governance by the military-controlled regime of unelected individuals. The military leadership needs to understand the message, and act accordingly, at least for the sake of upholding the spirit of the ‘Armed Forces Day’, which is establishing supremacy of civilian rule through representative democracy.

Poison on the platter

Passing off poisonous substances for food items is a flourishing racket and despite periodic surveillance and raids this goes on unabated. Though widely called adulteration this nefarious operation should be more properly regarded as mass poisoning, since not only quality of the food item is compromised, it is made positively injurious to the consumer’s health. Sometimes these killer substances are attractively packaged to win the consumers’ confidence. A group of profit hunting criminals are making a fast buck endangering the health of hundreds of thousands of consumers. Few crimes affect such a large number of people. But it goes on, because for some people greed has got the better of humanity and ethics. As more and more illicit operations are being routinely unearthed it appears that the number of such hard-boiled racketeers is far from infinitesimally small. This exposes the ethical bankruptcy of a growing segment of society. The one-way globalisation of the present times has added fuel to this kind of illicit operations by whetting consumerism and greed. However, any reference to global phenomenon should not be allowed to extenuate the enormity of these acts of slow-paced mass murder committed within the country.
   In the latest instance reported in the media, three spice factories in old Dhaka were caught mixing poisonous substances with turmeric and other spices. A mobile court with members of the Rapid Action Battalion seized a huge quantity of spurious turmeric and chilli powder. Eight persons were arrested and a total fine of Tk 6.5 lakh was realised from the factories for their alleged involvement in mixing toxic colour and different kinds of fertiliser in spices, according to a report published in New Age yesterday. It is further learnt that the dye seized from the premises is textile dye which is very harmful to the human body.
   It is not clear from media reports which trademark and which label the toxic substances will bear before being marketed but it is for the government to make a more thorough investigation and uproot the crime, lock, stock and barrel. It is necessary to know where the substances will go from the factory and how they will be marketed, whether packaged or open. It is quite likely that it will be packaged and some company’s label will be slapped on. Secret packaging should be stopped and food processing should be inspected in the factory before packaging. In other words, mixing, packaging, bottling and canning of spices and similar items should be transparent. As long as these criminal gangs continue their operation, inspection should be at all levels. A few days ago it was reported that caustic soda and poisonous chemicals are mixed in soyabean and mustard oil. All the spice and edible oil samples in the wholesale market should be tested.

THE trouble with magical moments is that they fade. Was Barack Obama’s election one such magical moment?
   Some friends organised a champagne breakfast on November 5 (that is when results were known in India because of the time difference) to celebrate the Obama victory.
   None of us had ever celebrated the victory of an American president earlier. What was so special on this occasion?
   Indeed, we had never been inspired ever to celebrate even an Indian election.
   Obama’s, in other words, was not just an election victory. It was a transformational happening, an unbelievable event like something brought down the chimney by Santa Claus. The world vibed with the American dream.
   I would be dishonest if I included all the Indians in the corporate world, bureaucracy, politics, journalism (and the Maruti-plus middle class) in the ranks of those deliriously happy at Obama’s victory.
   Remember, this country has been split down the middle ever since the Indo-US nuclear deal dominated all discourse for the past three years. Indeed at a time when Bush’s popularity ratings in the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Muslim world were in free fall, Israel and India were the only countries holding aloft the Bush banner. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was echoing this reality when he told President Bush in September, ‘The people of India love you.’ The gushing statement would have been sustainable in the event of a McCain victory (which is clearly what the prime minister’s men expected) but is a trifle embarrassing now that Obama has won.
   It requires a sort of psychological dissention to understand the response of those who rejoiced. Race does not explain the thrill. The race divide has been progressively overcome. Martin Luther King, Andrew Young (President Carter’s adviser), Kofi Annan, Colin Powel, Condoleezza Rice and, above all, Nelson Mandela have all exemplified emancipation from racial prejudice. But Obama’s success has taken the process to another zone.
   First of all, the American people have clasped the hands of the world’s citizens who were despairing at the US having turned its back on the ideals spelt out by the founding fathers. It was almost criminal the extent to which the neocon-driven Bush presidency was responsible for the disenchantment with America among folks like us.
   The Obama success reassures all of us about the American people’s capacity for renewal, almost reinvention.
   American people have recoiled on years of war, images of death and destruction on their TV screens. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans, like the rest of the world, looked forward to a benign superpower leading an increasingly interconnected world towards a multicultural harmony.
   The dream was first shattered by TV images of Iraqi humiliation in Operation Desert Storm, Intifadas, Palestinian kids with catapults facing Israeli tanks, five years of daily brutalisation of Bosnian Muslims. Global Muslim anger was at fever pitch when 9/11 happened, followed by the attack on Afghanistan, occupation of Iraq. The doctored world media toned down the destruction. The global networks joined the ‘war effort’.
   But even sanitised news could not conceal the daily stories about entire towns being wiped out, women, children, innocent old men bombed in their homes, followed by daily apologies from US field commanders at the ‘mistake’ due to poor intelligence. This went on for years without a break.
   Then in Lebanese and the Georgian conflicts, the side supported by the US lost. An unbroken string of heart rending images of attacks, weeping children, mothers beating their breasts, was now being followed by American defeats. And in the backdrop, right through the past eight years, were Guantanamo Bay, Bagram air base off Kabul and those dreadful ‘renditions’ of terror suspects to countries where ‘torture’ is legal.
   The dismantling of the liberal-democratic state, trampling of citizens rights were all disgusting realities for the world and the American people. The slogan of ‘change’ propelled the voters to remove the ‘filth’ associated with this past.
   I have deliberately not mentioned the economy because Obama’s victory was assured even prior to the Lehman Brothers and AIG Fiasco.
   The economic meltdown places on Obama’s head the thorniest crown. This economy cannot be revived by tinkering and bailouts. The giant wheel of money circulation has collapsed. It is like rail tracks having been removed from India’s railway networks. Bailouts are pontoon bridges on which railway networks cannot hurtle around.
   So, a new cooperative architecture of global finance has to be negotiated. It itself will test Obama. It will also provide him with an opportunity to embark on other themes where global cooperation (as opposed to Bush’s unilateralism) will have to be brought into play.
   Wait a minute. Why did I at the outset talk of the ‘fading’ magical moment? Well, because the lengthy transition is looking lengthier in this instance and a defeated Washington establishment is inserting stories which create the frightful illusion of its trying to muscle its way back to be in influential proximity to Obama.