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When will our civil society wake up?

SYED M RAHMAN
THE brutal and cowardly killing of SAMS Kibria has saddened all the conscious and sensible people of this land and elsewhere in the world. This has created a serious outrage amongst all of us irrespective of party affiliation, which is indeed a rare episode for this very "unfortunate" nation. Ordinarily, whatever happens around us, we try to look at that from our very partisan viewpoint, and I believe this goes for virtually everybody, be it politician, journalist, teacher, lawyer, businessman, cultural activist or any other professional -- you name it!
Even the government employees who are supposed to be neutral, at least as far as their actions and deeds are concerned, at times go out of their way to demonstrate their allegiance to the ruling party. We even hear of fierce competition among them to display their loyalty towards the ruling party. So, in this backdrop, I consider this "consensus" in how we feel about this horrific murder is a very rare "feat." Maybe this is something we may call a silver lining behind the cloud of our mean and selfdestructive nature.
I may sound somewhat sarcastic but I really cannot help it anymore. As a nation I believe it is time to call a spade a spade. As a matter of fact the time has long elapsed, but one must get the ball rolling before we reach a point of no return. This is why I would like to make some points for our intelligentsia to ponder upon.
There is no denial of the fact that we as a nation do not deserve to be treated by the rest of the world as unruly, inefficient, and corrupt kind of people with no self-esteem. We do not want us to be seen by the international community as a worthless and poverty ridden populace for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, that is what we are at the moment to the peoples around the world who are aware of the name of this small piece of land called Bangladesh. No matter how cruel this is, it has never been truer before than it is now. These are now clearly revealed by the recent comments and suggestions made by our "international friends and development partners" regarding our various performances in our development efforts, poverty alleviation, combating corruption and terrorism, religious fanaticism and so on. These friends are working very hard to make us stand on our own feet by providing us soft loans, grants, consultancy services etc.
We all know, at end of the day, they are all diplomats who are taught in a professional manner on how to be critical without hurting one's feelings.
These international friends have been offering "certificates" to both ruling and opposition party camps which in turn are being used by them against each other. They have started to comment at such a scale and manner about our internal affairs that one may wonder is Bangladesh a sovereign state who earned her independence at the cost of millions of lives? These people would not dare to do so when similar things occur in our neighbouring India.
I would not say that whatever these friends are suggesting is incorrect or irrelevant. My question is: are we not competent enough to identify these menaces and bring an end to these all by ourselves? Do we not have qualified professionals and intellectuals to advise our political leaders, both ruling and opposition, on what ought to be done to make ourselves proud before the world? There could be two possible answers: either yes or no.
If yes, then why our leaders are not paying heed to them? There is only one answer to that and that is they have lost their credibility! Their partisan acts have compelled our political leaders to consider their suggestions as "his master's voice." I think these professionals and intellectuals have also taken it for granted that their words will carry no value for whom they are meant, they keep on staying faithful to their likeminded political leaders. They sell out their conscience for some petty personal interests. This is indeed a vicious cycle!
In the case of the answer being
"no" -- I do not want to think that we are faced with bankruptcy in our intellectual abilities which some may consider wishful thinking!
Recent political turmoil in the country should give these points even more grounds. To keep things short, I would like to use only a couple of incidents and I start with the case of the grenade attack at Sheikh Hasina's meeting on August 21, 2004.
The government miserably failed to make any breakthrough into the investigation of this occurrence even when a major opposition leader like Ivy Rahman had to pay with her life as a result of this heinous attack. This is a sheer display of the incompetence, lack of will and skill, unpreparedness of its intelligence and other law enforcement agencies. Has anyone from the government, be it home minister or prime minister, made any officer from DFI, NSI, SB, or CID resign for failing to unearth the issue?
This also demonstrates that the decision makers in the government have not only failed to catch the perpetrators, they even failed to identify the officers of its intelligence and law enforcement agencies who were responsible for not being able to gather intelligence information to frustrate this attack. Now here comes the very obvious -- then why do we have to pay these people from the exchequer if they cannot carry out their assigned job properly? Finally, government had formed a one-member judicial enquiry committee whose report was so vague and incomplete, if not
ridiculous, as suggested by some extracts published in different newspapers, government itself probably decided that it would not be prudent to make it public, and accordingly sent it to cold-storage.
On the other hand, Awami League readily pointed their fingers to the ruling party for this attack without taking any time for thinking or doing the assessment. Consequently, some of the statements made by some of the AL leaders regarding the bullet holes in the vehicle carrying Sheikh Hasina turned out to be self-contradictory as newspaper reports suggested. Moreover, the leader of the opposition was so disgusted with the prime minister that she refused to allow her to come to her residence for seeing her condition.
Civil society, belonging to the AL camp, decided to keep their mouth shut about this impolite act, and the smarter ones even staunchly supported Sheikh Hasina's stance. Ruling party loyalists took full advantage of this and helped create even greater distance between these two leaders. End result is hartal, loss of lives and properties, portrayal of Bangladesh as a place for growing political turmoil, religious jingoism and fanaticism to the international community.
The second incident is the last one on January 27, 2005 at Habiganj. Mr. SAMS Kibria lost his life as a result of the grenade attack there. The aftermath was just a mere replication of the previous one. The PM wanted to go to Kibria's residence but his family members reportedly refused. They
expressed their total outrage and demanded investigation by independent international agencies. Some may consider this as an overreaction by the Kibria family. But in my view, at that point in time this is quite natural. Somebody who loses their dear ones in such a brutal manner, only can feel the pain of such loss. To me their reaction is quite OK. They have all the rights in the world to express their utmost disgust and dismay at the utter incompetence of the government and its law enforcement agencies.
To sum up, had Sheikh Hasina allowed Khaleda Zia to pay her a visit after August 21 attack, the tension between these two leaders would have diffused substantially. This would have also put Khaleda into an obligation to make her machinery work more effectively to
dig out the criminals. Hasina would have enjoyed more sympathy from the public in that case and surely this would have prevented the killing of Kibria in a subsequent grenade attack. Of course, it does not mean that Hasina is responsible for the incident, but if only had she shown a little bit of tolerance and patience, we night not have to watch the killing. By now it is quite clear that neither BNP nor AL alone can fight this menace without the help from each other. The unsolved bomb attacks during AL rule are the testimony to that effect.
I know one does not have to be an astrologer to say what I have just said. I do not even intend to indemnify the Khaleda Zia's government from failing to find out the culprits behind the grenade attacks. The point I am trying to make is the role of our intellectuals is now being seriously questioned by the ordinary public in the sense that rather than uniting these two leaders they are helping them only to get apart from each other. Because, unless these two are in agreement that they want to serve only the interests of their people, we would not be able to see any progress in the coming days.
The movement by the opposition AL and its allies to unseat the government would be a futile exercise. If we take lessons from history, AL and BNP must stay together or at least reach some sincere understanding on democratic norms, so that they do not need to take recourse of the political parties using religion to get them elected. If that does not happen very soon the uprising of fanatics will be almost certain to the detriment of our democracy and our so called civil society and the intellectuals perhaps unknowingly are only helping to that end. Syed M Rahman is a DS reader residing in Mahakhali.