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Will crying wolf restore credibility of BNP?

Mozammel H. Khan
BNP chairperson and the leader of the opposition in parliament came down heavily on the government, accusing it of implementing the agenda of its "foreign masters." In tune with her earlier utterances, she said: "This government assumed office by digital manipulation.... My party will not sit idle if the Awami League (AL) government does not refrain from conspiracies against the country, making the country a client state." Even die last caretaker government, which came because of the AL and allies' movement against the BNP and its allies' effort to hold a voterless election, did not escape her wrath.
Because of her belief that the people of the country could be fooled by this rhetoric, she adopted the slogan "save the people, save the country" in the last general election. However, not many people at home and abroad, except for a few diehard anti-AL (not pro BNP) columnists in only a couple of news dailies, subscribed to her preposterous accusations.
It was widely believed that "one eleven" would make a qualitative change in the future politics of Bangladesh. However, the BNP chairperson’s utterances and actions do not show that any lesson has at all been learned. After her smashing election debacle, it was
expected that she would do some soul-searching and rebuild her party as an alternate positive political force, which sensible people could feel allegiance to without destroying their consciences. She needed some friends of the party, not foes.
Her statement that "foreign powers” brought the AL-alliance to power is an insult to the free will of our people, so vociferously expressed in the December 29. 2008 election. As the leader of the opposition, she has the legal right to criticise the actions of the government, but as each day passes by, the stories of wanton looting and rifling of the national exchequer, arm smuggling, money laundering, holding of fat foreign bank accounts and encroachment of others' properties by her near and dear ones, it is becoming morally difficult for her to criticise the wrong-doings of the sixmonth old government. When she speaks publicly, the faces all around her are either convicts or accused people.
She has tried to politically resurrect a person who has damaged the most sacred institution of the Westminster democracy, the speaker's position, by robbing the national exchequer. Her party's secretary general took air conditioners, furniture etc. from his official residence to his personal one, and rice and other food items from the canteen of the parliament in addition to misappropriating lakhs of takas from the parliamentary allocations. It became the biggest joke when he responded that the allegations were made to tarnish the image of his family, when the deeds and misdeeds of his two sons are well known.
Keeping him as a spokesman for the party cannot help to restore the acceptability of the party to the people. How will the BNP chairperson explain to the people how her elder son Tarique Rahman got a waiver of interest worth Tk 12 crore on bank loans within a week after the BNP-Jamaat coalition assumed power in 2001? In any civilised democracy, that action alone would enough to seal the political fate of a former PM for good.
The BNP chairperson alleged that a "conspiracy is on to make Bangladesh a failed and non functional state." Ironically, the characterisation of Bangladesh as a "failed state” surfaced only during the dark era of the last BNP-Jamaat government. Bangladesh was ranked 17 in the global ranking of failed states by an American magazine named Foreign Policy in 2005. Bangladesh was termed as "the most dysfunctional country in Asia" by die Asia Times in its issue on April 15, 2004. The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation in their report (2005) on Bangladesh said: "Weak rule of law... manifesting itself in some of the world's worst official corruption, civil crime, and political violence ... continues to burden Bangladesh's democracy." It added: "Until the government addresses Bangladesh's many structural weaknesses, there is little reason for optimism about the country's future." These are not pleasant citations on the part anyone who wants to see Bangladesh as a modern, democratic and secular state with its rightful place in the community of nations.
Quite to the contrary, the news media
around the world, by and large, dubbed the last election as the most fair in Bangladesh's history and the election victory of AL and its allies as a reflection of optimism. The Toronto Star, the most circulated and influential news daily of Canada wrote (January 1, 2009) in an
editorial entitled "Optimism in Bangladesh:" "Bangladesh attracts little attention beyond its perennial cyclones and floods. But a political hurricane swept through the South Asian nation this week that has cleared the path to a secular democracy -- and set back the march of radical Islamists." About the fairness of the election, it went on: "The result, in a campaign remarkably free of the violence and vote-rigging that plagued past ballots, was decisive: In a landslide, Hasina's secularists captured 230 of 300 seats in Parliament. Zia's BNP was reduced to a rump of 27 seats." The editorial concluded with a tone of optimism: "At a time when the West is wringing its hands over the encroachment of political Islam, the world's second-biggest Muslim nation has shown its commitment to democracy and the resilience of a moderate Islam that renounces violence. That Bangladesh is following the lead of Indonesia — the world's most populous Muslim-majority state -- in embracing liberal democracy is further grounds for optimism, and a welcome counterpoint to the growing power of the mullahs in nearby Pakistan."
The BNP chief further alleged that "the country is passing through a bad time because of a conspiracy against its independence and sovereignty." In today's global village, if linking Bangladesh to the proposed Asian Highway means encroachment on her sovereignty, then no state in Europe is sovereign and neither America nor Canada is sovereign a country. The geographical sovereignty of a nation of 150 million people can never be encroached upon. It is more so for the nation than sacrificed 3 million of her sons to gain the sovereignty. Crying wolf only tarnishes the dignity of the nation and wrongly exposes its vulnerability. It will never help to restore the credibility of the party that was squarely responsible for making Bangladesh a dysfunctional state. Do the people want to go back to that dark era? Dr. Mozammel H Khan is the Convener of the Canadian Committee for Human Rights and Democracy in Bangladesh.