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NEWS ANALYSIS

Shame weighing down on us

Syed Badrul Ahsan
The Bangladesh Development Forum will not meet in Dhaka early next month. The government would like us to know, if we go by media reports, that the postponed meeting could take place sometime in February next year. Had these been normal times dominated by equally normal circumstances, we would not be unduly surprised by the move.
But, then, these are not normed times. With the World Bank making it clear that corruption has come into the entire Padma Bridge question, that it is suspending its promised funds to the government unless the issue is
resolved, it is obvious that the government is in a lonely corner.
Its dilemma now is one of damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. Which is a pity, for this government happens to be one which came in through promising change in the country. The change, it was fair for the nation to assume, was to be of a defining kind, of a sort that would lead Bangladesh to newer vistas of progress, metaphorically as well as literally.
Now that the WB has made its fury known over what it believes is the gross corruption involved in the Padma Bridge project, that promise of change seems like a thing going back to a long-ago past. And what we must deal with now is watch how the government rolls back the damage and by doing so how it means to retrieve the ground it has lost in these past few weeks.
That its popularity is speedily on the wane is a fact writ large all over the place. That it must act is now an imperative. That it has not acted so far has only contributed to the making of a disaster.
The WB has, as we understand it, pointed its fingers at Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain and his family-owned firm SAHCO. There are too the rumours flying around some other influential people close to the corridors of power being in the thick of this gathering scandal. For his part, the minister has denied any wrong-doing. He has every right to state his point of view, especially in matters where he feels his name is being dragged in the mud. Whether his denial is credible and therefore acceptable is quite another matter, though.
What is of significance here is that oft-repeated thought of democratic accountability. Even if one gives the minister the benefit of doubt, even if all these allegations turn out to have been without basis, it is only ethical for the minister not just to offer to resign but actually resign so that the government can move on with the task at hand.
The incredible part of the story here is that the minister has demonstrated no willingness to resign. Worse than his reluctance to quit has been the bizarre. And that has come through the studied silence of the government on the issue. Barring Finance Minister AMA Muhith (and that too because he recently had the unenvi- able job of listening to World Bank officials in Washington enlightening him on the Padma Bridge allegations), the machinery of the government has stayed silent. Here we have a crisis which increasingly undermines the image of the government, both at home and abroad, and yet the government will not act.
It should have been for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to go for decisive action, for two reasons. The first is that the scandal, unless it is swiftly dealt with, will balloon out of control, leaving her government open to accusations of wrong-doing even as it pursues all those cases of corruption against the BNP government of the period 2001-2006. And the second concerns the dent that has been made in the government's armour abroad with these charges of corrupt practices emerging into light.
Let there be no mistake. The Padma Bridge is, for both the government and the people of Bangladesh, an issue of national self-esteem. With the economy not in good shape (and that is saying it euphemistically), the country is in sore need of funds, of an enhancement in its foreign currency reserves. But when a few individuals, abusing their positions in the corridors of power, put an entire nation to shame, it is the moral responsibility of the government to take corrective measures.
For Sheikh Hasina, there are all the scandal-related stories happening around the globe in modern times to take lessons from. Besides, she and her party, already badly bruised (with some of the wounds being self-inflicted) in varied areas, will do themselves a world of good to remember that their term in office proceeds rapidly toward the end, that they need to wage a new electoral battle if they mean to return to office.
In critical times, silence is always devastating. And denial is self-defeating. For the government, the moment is here to come clean with its version of the Padma Bridge scandal. If heads need to roll, let them roll. And it does not matter how close the owners of those heads are to the more powerful of individuals in the government. The choice is between sacrificing a corrupt few and sacrificing the interests of the country. Sheikh Hasina must surely be aware of the ramifications of any move that ignores the interests of the country.
Here is what the opposition BNP must now do, again in the larger interest of the nation. It can march into parliament when it convenes later this month and raise, loudly and purposefully, all those questions which have been exercising the minds of the people since the WB first let us in on the corruption it thinks is holding up progress on the Padma Bridge. It can compel the ruling dispensation to come forth with the truth and do us all a favour, despite all the dark deeds it itself remains accused of committing in the past.
The nation waits to know where things have gone wrong with the Padma Bridge project. How much does the prime minister know about the scandal? And when did she know? And when will she act?
This haemorrhaging of governmental dignity is fast leading to a shooting down, one after the other, of societal priorities.