A cabinet member called me late at night the other day. The person has, for long, been a family friend. He thought all well wishers of the ruling party should unite and support them again, so that they can face the “not so worthy” opposition. The gentleman could not figure out why, with so much development work done and people friendly activities carried out, the ruling party stalwarts failed to receive public support in the city corporation polls.
He spoke about the Barisal city corporation elections and gave a long list of development works done by the government: more than double power generation, flyovers, roads and culverts, railways and waterways development, among many.
He went on talking about Digital Bangladesh, promotions of thousands of government officials, enrolling thousands of rural schools for direct funding from the government, recruitment of various junior officials and support staff and an all-out support for women empowerment.
The gentleman is very intelligent. He didn’t forget to tell me that 38 out of the 39 generals of the Bangladesh army were promoted during this government. Similar things happened in other forces too. Thousands of crores of taka have been allocated for modernisation of the armed forces. He went on listing other good jobs done by the government.
I was very puzzled and was almost resolved that the present government should naturally win the next election.
However, I held on to my breath and decided to put in some constructive criticism about the government. I must thank him, unlike many of his friends and colleagues in the party, he decided to lend me his ears.
I thought the disconnect started with: allocation of all the good cabinet roles to relatively junior folks, while dedicated, senior party leaders became alienated from the core and were denied space in the party; picking some less knowledgeable, and more importantly, defocused persons for top regulatory roles; allocating many influential roles to the erstwhile leftist colleagues; letting the arrogant and retired public servants dictate the terms for elected public representatives all of these have left many dedicated party stalwarts suffering from a crisis of identity.
I also thought that the ruling party and its key leaders should never have allowed a personal fight between a lawyer and a Nobel laureate to enter the public domain, and should not have diverted all their energy to undermine a single person so respected by the global community.
When the gentleman said he could not make out why and how educated people can support a political party hobnobbing with the anti-liberation forces, my one line reply was: sympathy for the “marginalised.”
The party in power wanted to kill the opposition. They were denied two more seats in the front row of the parliament. While all the cases lodged against their own party men during the interim government were withdrawn, they did not allowed the law to take its own course when it came to people in the opposition.
The ruling party totally forgot about the role of a strong opposition in democracy. Their activities were geared towards branding the opposition as a fascist party while entirely de-emphasising the pluralist side of democracy.
And it has not only been the opposition; despite being a democratic party, the ruling party has left very little space for the civil society and many respected individuals to breathe in the corridor. They are often alleged to have put the wrong people in the right job based on personal and political considerations. Despite being a predominantly Muslim country; their relationship with the biggies in the Muslim world has been dented significantly. They have also lost respect from Europeans or North Americans. “India love” also didn’t work at all.
The cabinet member who rang me is a good-hearted person. He almost accepted all the allegations but posed a return question to me: will the situation change with the new government?
He thought it is going to be the same, if not worse. He strongly felt that, despite a change of guard, the mediocre government officers will continue to grab good positions on political considerations, businessmen, close to the political order, will become loan defaulters, the disciplined forces would be blamed for weak chain of command, and inefficient academics will be granted senior commercial roles and so on. It is going to be old wine in a new bottle, he strongly felt.
My voice became very feeble. Our martyrs who fought a valiant freedom fight deserved better than this. They did not expect the politics of this country to deteriorate in this way. Our vibrant youths didn’t expect this. Our hard working entrepreneurs have not earned this.
We need to change the course. We need to dream better and truly believe: “Dream is not what you get to see in sleep, dream is what does not let you sleep.”
We want our politicians and our change drivers also to join the dream for a better Bangladesh and then in every way possible to walk the talk.
