High Points of 2007

We saw these moments as reminders that the potential for the people of Bangladesh is as unlimited as their valor is enduring.

10. Tamim Iqbal extinguishes a billion dreams: It may have been the Year of a Million Dreams in Disneyworld, but Tamim Iqbal did one better during Bangladesh’s opening match against India during the ICC World Cup. Set a modest total, India were banking on exposing Bangladesh’s batting vulnerabilities and banging out some early wickets. Instead, Zaheer Khan and Munaf Patel ran straight into Tamim Iqbal, who danced and bludgeoned his way to a superb half-century to set up an emphatic win. When he danced down the pitch to Zaheer and swung him away for a six, you could feel a billion dreams similarly flying out of the stadium, extinguished for good. For Bangladeshi cricket-lovers, it was the best moment of the year.

9. Separation of Judiciary: Sure, it has been argued that effective autonomy still has not been granted to the judiciary; with the Law Ministry still able to exercise significant administrative control over our justice system, and control over the Judicial Services still opaque. Still, in this matter, every step is a significant advancement, and we congratulate all involved during our march to a judiciary that will, one day, be the defenders of the weak and downtrodden that they were meant to be.

8. Bloggers make their voice heard: 2007 was the year when the online blogging community truly made their presence felt and emerged as a viable alternative to the censored and suppliant mainstream media. Starting from the military coup in January, Dr. Yunus’ tragi-comic effort to establish himself as a political force, the arrest of our two former Prime Ministers, the August student protests, and the controversy surrounding the sending of cultural artifacts to the end of the year, bloggers in and out of Bangladesh were always there reporting news, providing analysis and sharing their thoughts with the rest of us. However, the blogosphere’s best moment came when the story about General Moeen U. Ahmed’s corruption and embezzlement of funds was reported to the world just when the good general was getting ready to portray himself to the world as Musharraf’s Mini-Me. Bloggor-bloggor was here to stay.

7. New Age shows the way: New Age, along with Manabzamin and Naya Diganta, has been the honorable exception to general spinelessness shown by the print media in Bangladesh. Nurul Kabir, I believe, was the first editor to get a call from military intelligence to toe the junta line in post-military ruled Bangladesh. Ever since, Mr. Kabir and his colleagues have been bold and forthcoming in their urgency for the restoration of civil and democratic liberties to Bangladeshis. We congratulate the New Age team on their status as the best English newspaper in Bangladesh (and we note the perfectly pathetic performance of another English newspaper, by contrast).

6. BUET turns 60: Established as the Dacca Survey School under Imperial rule, in 1876, and upgraded to an engineering college through patronage of the Nawabs of Dhaka, and to an university in 1947, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) remains the abode of the best and the brightest in Bangladesh. Its name is synonymous with brilliance in Bangladesh; its alumni work with distinction and success all around the world. While our young country is still trying to figure out the secrets of institutional management, BUET remains an awesome testimony to the reaches of our students if only we get things right. A salute to the faculty, students and staff of BUET, past and present.

5. The Lion in Winter: It is a beautiful thing to see one of our countrymen stand up to power and tell the truth to their face. In any society, one expects members of three professions: lawyers, journalists, and teachers, to have a special interest in defending the truth. The current military junta has tried to intimidate all the professions with varying success; they have had the least success with our teachers, and sadly, the most success with our lawyers. Senior advocates like Khandokar Mahbubuddin Ahmed have declined to take on cases so as not to offend the military government, others like Rokonuddin Mahmud have decided to extend all out servility to the military government in order to escape under attention from the tax authorities, and some like Ajmalul Hossain QC, have decided to extract as much profit as possible from the current situation and set up a package program for any person facing prosecution by the Anti-Corruption Commission, full legal defense provided, for the fee of Taka Thirty Lakh only. And of course, there is Kamal Hossein, about whom the least that is said, the better. The man who has stood head and shoulder above his compatriots, and once again reaffirmed his status as the best lawyer in Bangladesh has been Rafiqul Huq. Managing several decisions from the High Court only to see them overturned by a Supreme Court Appellate Division taking orders from our military, he has shown unparallelled legal skills. He perhaps provided the single most clairvoyant moment of 2007, when he advised his clients, through the press, that all legal recourse had been exhausted; if they were to deserve the moniker of politicians; they would have to emerge from jail through their own devices. 2008 will show whether his illustrious clients can heed his words.

4. Renewed impetus to try the war criminals of 1971: They are a blot on Bangladesh’s beautiful landscape, a constant reminder of the collective pain and tribulation our nation endured before its bloody beginning. It is debatable what is more tragic: that men born to this country lost the chance to align themselves with their nation’s finest hour, or that they still fail to display regret for the past actions. What is not debetable is that punishment is due, and with broad-based consensus on this issue emerging, we remain hopeful of seeing some convictions in 2008.

3. Purification of our political parties: We shall not enter the garden of heaven, the Holy Koran advises us, without facing the same tribulations faced by our generations past. Our political leadership, one hopes, learned this lesson anew during this calendar year. A whole generation of leaders and activists had emerged who were accustomed to thinking of elections as their routine privilege, and to calculating their political strength by tallying business donations and political cadre available to them. This year should serve as a reminder that there will always remain an element in our national polity that can bring to the table more guns and resources than even the most well-entrenched politico: the only thing this group could not call on was popular support and political mandate, unless it is handed over to them. Lesson learned.

2. A tribute to the grassroots activist: It took special guts to face down the security forces this year when they went on the rampage, but it was done, time and again. While the news of many of these events were suppressed, news kept leaking out of provincial journalists facing the wrath of the local military bosses for their investigative journalism, or local political leaders being tortured and sent to jail for refusing to bow to the will of the military regime. But no amount of censorship could hide the bravery of the men and women who took part in the August student revolutions, who faced down the lathi-charges and the tear gas attacks, and who refused to back down in the face of the most systematic assault by military intelligence on any group of people ever seen in our nation’s history. They made their point, and by doing so, won.

1. Post-SIDR rehabilitation efforts: The headlines flew cheap and fast, and then dried up just as rapidly, first in the international press, and later in the domestic press. When the relief-workers and journalists left, the ordinary men and women who would have to rebuild their entire life remained. That they set to do so with an iron will, and a little smile, is the source of our greatest hope. Come next year, when the cities will be debating elections and political campaigns; our farmers will provide us a bumper crop, and our overseas work-force will send us billions of dollars, interest-free, in the form of remittance from abroad. It is to keep faith with them that we must work; it is their well-being we must always think of first when making national decisions.

Happy 2008, everybody.