We choose to commit blunders deliberately as though we do not have enough. Or, things have come to a tolerable point where we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Actually, there has been no happy radiance; no indication of a transformation or visible attitude of diversification from the negatives. We are rather bent on playing shoddier games, day in day out.
As if we are yet to reach the pages of the Guinness Book for breaking world records a million times by careful preservation of stinking political perversion.
During the just concluded local government polls, there have been distasteful remarks made by the acting CEC when he claimed the voting was peaceful all over and loss of human lives were but natural. To him, polls were more important than human lives and human rights.
He rebuked the BNP chief by remarking that she rubs her nose in the dirt. He was referring to her comments that the Election Commission was no good, and it was not worth it to conduct fair polls. As if the acting CEC doesn’t like to be right behind the politicians in trading salvos.
With almost all the senior BNP leaders behind bars (many are reported to be ill), the suffocated party finds itself in real hardship. They have realised by now that the party will have to be tough, wise, and cool to survive. Things won’t be easy anymore.
As mentioned many times in this column, BNP just cannot capitalise on issues that could put the government in awkward situations. It somehow misses out on these options. This is another sign of political poverty.
When the Upazila Council polls are just about over and half the country is busy with cricket, there comes the claim from BNP that the first president of the country was Ziaur Rahman, and not Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
I am not ready to take this seriously. I am not one of those who gives in to such empty contest. I will not jump on the bandwagon of intellectuals to waste time over discussing and re-discussing the events of March 1971. I am not ready to be taken for a ride.
All of us, especially the political players, are fully aware of our national character. We don’t think much before we ink. We feel one can go scotfree by saying anything that comes to mind or slips through the lips. After a little while, the heat subsides, and people like to forget things and take up another issue.
This cycle of issues keeps rotating and keeps us busy day in day out. We have people fighting it out in the streets and dark alleys of the political edifices on trifle matters, and we have the media trying to make out the truth, sometimes faltering.
We have the civil society, who most of the time gives out their verdicts on issues that did not even show up clearly, and we have the agile politicians who put anything and everything dreadful on the opposition right away.
Since dwelling on the past and making it more controversial is our best pastime, how do we expect to move forward? Are we really a forward-looking nation? Not by the look of our acts at least.
Why do we dwell on the past? Simply because we don’t have visions for the future. Our minds are severely blocked and fail to fathom the shallowest stream. We have a ruthlessly disabled mind.
Distorting history is not new. History is always drafted in favour of the victor. History is full of accounts as thought right by the author of the time. There are always two or more schools of opposing thoughts on issues that history discusses. So there can never be a straight line in history.
The wars that were fought around the world from the very beginning have either ended with signing a treaty or on verbal agreements dictated by the conqueror. The vanquished never had any say. Favours were only doled out to them.
When Awami League took control of things after liberation, they said and wrote what they felt right. Later, many of their claims were challenged by their own men and the then opposition.
One thing was settled – that it was Ziaur Rahman who read out the declaration of independence over the radio in Kalurghat on March 27. According to records, Ziaur Rahman had made a few announcements, one following the other.
There have been some changes in the draft when he read out the declaration for the second time. It was Zia who was first heard. There should be no debate over this.
On the same breath, it should be known to all that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the first president of the republic, declared by the Mujibnagar government. Syed Nazrul Islam was the acting president.
I deem that the BNP leadership is also aware of the fact. They came up with the new argument just because of the intolerance and insults meted out to Ziaur Rahman by the AL and its allies.
We have buried Mujib and Zia, both should now be spared.
Alas, both of them and other national leaders won’t be allowed the benefits of admiration because we live in the dim dungeons of ancient times. We have turned into souls of darkness.
