Last Friday, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, the son of, and an adviser to, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, underscored the need of his mother remaining in power for a minimum of another four to five terms (20 to 25 years) so as to achieve the Malaysian model of development for Bangladesh. He also called his mother, and our prime minister, the Mahathir Mohamad of Bangladesh.
Quite a revelation indeed, coming as it did from a young man educated in the US who is also representing the new generation. Our prime minister’s son and adviser was speaking at a program called “Let us talk with Sajeeb Wazed Joy on Bangladesh achieving middle income status,” organised by the Centre for Research and Information (CRI) in Dhaka.
One significant difference between Sheikh Hasina and Mahathir Mohamad is that, unlike the former, the latter did not climb up the ladder of political power following a family pedigree. While Sheikh Hasina stepped into the shoes of her slain father as AL chief in the 1980s and began gaining political clout largely in the light of her father’s charismatic persona and political career, Mahathir Mohamad rose to power by dint of his own hard work and characteristic qualities.
His father was a school teacher who had nothing to do with politics. Mahathir Mohamad, who was educated at Sultan Abdul Hamid College and the University of Malaya in Singapore, where he studied medicine, was first elected to parliament in 1964 as a member of the UMNO, the largest political party of Malaysia. He was re-elected to parliament in 1973, became a minister in 1974, and then deputy prime minister in 1976.
Mahathir Mohamad won five successive parliamentary elections and served for 22 years. Under him, Malaysia achieved rapid growth and was acclaimed as an emerging tiger in Southeast Asia -- together with Singapore -- in terms of development.
But he left behind a mixed legacy. During the 1980s, he became more authoritarian and less democratic. In 1987, he instituted the Internal Security Act, under the cover of which he shut down four newspapers and ordered the arrest of nearly 106 activists, religious teachers, and political opponents, including Anwar Ibrahim, his former deputy prime minister.
He amended the constitution to restrict the interpretive power of the Supreme Court, leading to a number of high-ranking members to resign. But by and large, his personal integrity remained untainted, unlike most of our pedigree politicians.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina moved heaven and earth for the caretaker government system while she was in opposition, and quickly did away with said system when she was in power, so as to preside over the transition to power and, more pointedly, the voters, with a one-party parliamentary election held on January 5, 2014. The less said the better about the cause of democracy being served.
Maybe here we see a bit of similarity between “our Mahathir Mohamad” and Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad. But I am not sure if the Malaysian government, under Mahathir Mohamad, also had an array of un-elected advisers like we have in the current government.
There is another aspect which needs to be looked into. As a country that was once war-ravaged, we have received, over the years, massive economic aid, running into billions of dollars, from the international community for our development since our independence. In this context, our graduation to a low-middle income status now after 43 years pales into insignificance when compared to the development strides of Malaysia.
Here, the crucial factor has been the rampant corruption that has existed within our successive governments -- political or otherwise. During the caretaker government’s reign, in the event now known as 1/11, a tip of the iceberg that is our corruption was made visible when corruption charges were brought against many heavy-weight political leaders, after which many such leaders went into hiding, leaving behind very large amounts of cash money with houses and luxury SUVs thrown about for good measure. Mahathir Mohamad has been out of power in Malaysia for a while, but his reputation remains largely untainted.
We would do well to remember that the people of this country have laid down their lives and sacrificed the honour and dignity of their mothers and sisters at the clarion call of Bangabandhu, our undisputed leader and Joy’s own grandfather, not just to be independent from Pakistan, but for genuine democracy and fundamental democratic rights which would shape the destiny of this country and its people.
We do not want a Gaddafi or a Saddam to develop this country. We look forward to leaders standing on a moral high ground of a democratic landscape and leading us out of darkness to the light at the end of the tunnel, and out of poverty into affluence.
