Instances in Bangladesh of political resignations have been rare. Around the world, of course, stories of men and women in power tendering their resignations and walking away into the sunset have been aplenty.
We cannot, of course, place Boris Johnson in the club of men of power opting for resignation despite the fact that a majority of his own Conservative Party MPs have shown him the door. He should have quit through handing over power to his deputy Dominic Raab. He did not do that. He has hung on.
In Bangladesh, with a new storm rising as a consequence of Foreign Minister A K Momen’s newest gaffe of asking India to ensure that Sheikh Hasina’s government stays in office, this idea of resignation begins to exercise the popular imagination.
In this country, Justice Abu Sayeed Chowdhury and AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury walked away from the nation’s presidency for reasons they were aware of better, and so did we. In 1973, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had Information Minister Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury resign from the cabinet.
Later, in October 1974, Bangabandhu instructed Finance Minister Tajuddin Ahmad to resign. Tajuddin obliged. President Mohammadullah resigned in January 1975 to pave the way for Bangabandhu to take over as president following the adoption of the fourth amendment to the constitution.
Dr Kamal Hossain, away on a tour of Europe as foreign minister at the time of Bangabandhu’s assassination, did not come back home despite the usurper regime’s entreaties. General Hussein Muhammad Ershad was compelled by a rising popular agitation against his regime to resign in December 1990.
To resign from high office takes courage. And yet when individuals in power are clearly unable to carry out their responsibilities -- through committing gaffes, through presiding over their departments or ministries in haphazard or incompetent manner and then not taking responsibility for their poor leadership -- it is whole societies that are left brutalized.
Morally upright people, wherever they may be occupying positions which they begin to find untenable, owe it to themselves and to society at large to resign. They may be in politics or academia or administration or journalism.
The point is inescapable: If you commit a wrong or are uncomfortable with the position or policy of one who is holding or may be holding a position higher than yours, do the decent thing of letting people know that you are calling it quits.
In 1960s Pakistan, Foreign Minister Z A Bhutto, having whipped up a good deal of agitation around a supposed (and false) secret clause in the Tashkent Declaration signed by President Ayub Khan and Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in January 1966, did not take the path to resignation but continued in the Ayub government. Not until Ayub asked him to resign, threatening him with dismissal if he did not, did Bhutto resign.
In India, once the judiciary passed judgment in 1975 on Indira Gandhi over election malpractices allegedly committed at the 1971 elections, it would have made sense for the Indian leader to resign and fight the case as a private citizen. She did not do that but went for a wholesale change, a grievous one, in the country’s politics by imposing a state of emergency and clamping, in authoritarian manner, severe restrictions on civil liberties. India was left badly wounded.
Resignation tales are generally a staple of democracies. Where democracy is constricted or where politics, in the guise of pluralism, remains in the straitjacket of the cult of personality, instances of ministers and other powerful figures submitting resignations is as good as non-existent.
In Bangladesh, a minister in a former government refused to resign when a railway accident took place. His contention was strange, in fact outrageous. He was not driving the engine and so did not have to quit! Perhaps he did not recall that there was a time when Lal Bahadur Shastri tendered his resignation as railways minister to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The resignation was accepted.
President Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, against the background of the Watergate scandal, remains a point of reference for students and scholars of political history. He knew he had run out of options in his battle to weather the storm.
When a group of senior Republicans led by Senator Barry Goldwater trooped over to the White House and informed Nixon he had reached the end of the road, the president handed authority over to Vice President Gerald Ford and flew home to San Clemente in California.
British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, having regained power at the 1974 election, decided in 1976 on his own to leave office when the going was still good for him. He was succeeded by James Callaghan, who remained at 10 Downing Street till May 1979, when the Tories led by Margaret Thatcher stormed back to power. In October 1963, Minister for War John Profumo, caught lying about his relationship with Christine Keeler, admitted his misdemeanour and resigned.
In France, no one demanded that President Charles de Gaulle resign. But it was De Gaulle himself who vowed to leave the Elysee if a referendum he had called on a constitutional amendment did not go according to his wishes. He lost the referendum and immediately left for his country home in his native village. That was in April 1969.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy resigned in 1977 because he was not in agreement with President Anwar Sadat’s decision to travel to Jerusalem in his search for peace with Israel. Fahmy’s stand was a principled one. His sense of morality was greater than his desire to remain in power.
Politics requires the best from those who practise it as a profession. Those who trivialize it through demonstrations of their incompetence or arrogance or corruption or inanities should not be in the positions they hold in government.
Too many gaffes by a minister should be reason enough for him to walk away from the high office he holds. There are too ministers who, once their families are detected to have been involved in corrupt deals through their links to the powerful, should publicly take responsibility for such corruption and resign.
Politicians who, holding public office, enrich themselves through business deals, setting up banks, et cetera, lose the moral ground to be part of government. Those in charge of public institutions and called to the Anti-Corruption Commission for their role in an embezzlement of funds should be directed to resign or, if they do not leave, be dismissed straightaway.
A final thought: The people of Bangladesh know full well of all the wrongs that have been and are being committed, through a variety of means, by men and women of power. It is respect for such men and women which plunges to the depths.
When politicians lose respect, what is the point of their being in politics, of their speaking to us sanctimoniously of the beauty of democracy?
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
