Sheikh Hasina was released from jail yesterday, and is on her way to the United States right now. Forget all talks of medical parole, and returning in two months, or having her release order cancelled by the government at any time: Sheikh Hasina will only return to Bangladesh now in one of two situations. Either to lead a movement against the military government, or to lead Awami League after it has won a parliamentary majority in the next election.
When this military government came to power after last year’s military coup, its natural impulse was to go hard against the party it was revolting against: the BNP. In the middle, some long-winded rhetoric has gone into hailing this government as one that would clean up all politics in Bangladesh and start a new era in our country’s governance, but that has been shown to be the nonsense it is. Now, they are back where they started: the only question is how they are going to deal with the BNP.
For all their bravado, they will find it hard to quash BNP’s millions of dedicated workers and grassroots activists. In fact, it was the growing cry of unity between BNP and AL that really prompted them to release Hasina. She should be thankful to the workers and activists of both BNP and AL who chose to do the right thing, not the easy thing. She should also give a special thanks to Khandokar Delwar Hossain, the loudest proponent of united and coordinated action between the BNP or AL, and a man who has demanded her release louder and more consistently than many who thronged her drawing-room in Sudha Shadhan yesterday.
They would love to exile Khaleda Zia from Bangladesh as well, throw Khandokar Delwar Hossain inside the prison cells, and remould BNP into a party that would be subservient to the military government and their political toadies. In fact, this revamped BNP would get the most-preferred toady status. But for that to happen, Khaleda Zia has to leave, and for now, whatever slim hopes there are of her leaving will materialize only if they also free her sons: Tareq Rahman and Arafat Rahman. And they will have a very hard time freeing Tareq Rahman. As secret negotiations between Khaleda Zia and the military government stand right now, if only Arafat Rahman is allowed to go abroad, then Zia will stay in the country, but BNP will participate in the dialogues with the government.
It is worth noting that if by any chance Khaleda Zia can be sent out of the country, then the next month or so will be hell for BNP, because all of us know that sooner or later, Khaleda Zia will indeed return to Bangladesh. Moeen U. Ahmed also knows this, thus he will use the grace period immediately after Zia’s departure to sideline Khandokar Delwar Hossain and get his minions in BNP top offices. The preparation for this has already started, with Prothom Alo only too delighted to resume their role as the military government’s propaganda piece and start attacking whomever is the current number one enemy of the military government.
As long as Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina were behind bars, the military government had the luxury of intiating all the moves. The two leaders were reduced to passive defense; they could only react to the actions of the military government, althought they did a stalwart job doing so. With Sheikh Hasina released, the military government has already lost much of this advantage, especially given Hasina’s mercurial temperment. Give her maybe a couple of days to regain her spirits, but then be prepared to hear some startling revealations about Bangladesh’s current tyrants.
Also, the last time the military government arrested our two leaders, they went quietly, without a murmur. Don’t expect the same thing to happen again. The military government has had their move, and they’ve failed in a mind-blowing scale. The next time they try to arrest either Khaleda or Hasina after releasing them, they’d better bring their tanks with them.
Lastly, this would be a good time to remind all of us that our generals still want the same thing they have always wanted, to get off scot-free for the two years of torture and oppression, and to leave behind a powerful President who will safeguward their interests. And releases or no releases, the only language they understand is that of force. This nightmare is not over.
June 12, 2008 at 2:26 pm
[...] Tacit comments in Drishtipat blog: Sheikh Hasina has been given neither bail nor parole. The courts have exempted her from showing up in person for the trials, but absent a bail or parole, she should still be in jail. Unless there is a secret order somewhere labeling Sudha Shadhan a subjail, Sheikh Hasina is currently, de jure, a runaway from the law. [...]
June 13, 2008 at 9:22 pm
In close resemblance to coups in the past leading to a rule by the military government, 1/11 was essentially a veiled top-down action and not a transparent bottom-up movement. Anything that moves from top to bottom is basically undemocratic in nature whether these are ideas that flow from the shushil political pundits in the top to the naive rural countrymen in the bottom; or, from the army chain of command in the top to the unelected civil administration in the bottom.
The veil of 1/11 explains this nature of the emergency caretakers. The army did not take power directly like Ershad, but it ruled from behind wearing a musk of a civilian caretaker. In this process it used the ideas and the credibility of the Shusills who were formal advisors and informal allies of the junta.
1/11 exploited the longstanding crack in our society between the educated shushill-minded urbanites (including expatriates) and the vast majority of our non-shushillian uneducated country folks, by ramming down their throats lofty ideas of reform preferred by the donors that were long discarded by the vast majority of the people.
Whether these reforms have any merit is one question but whether a proper representative democratic process have not been followed to implement them is quite another. Dodging the political process in a representative democracy is a top-down abuse by an unelected army-backed and donor-planted caretaker government that is bound to fail as it has no scope for any people support. The spontaneous support of the people that elected politicians receive cannot be planted by the World Bank or the IMF. That is why the will of the people and the sovereignty of our republic need to be so often twisted by extra-constitutional forces of home and abroad.
Politicians in Bangladesh are thought to be incompetent and dynastic managerial classes who can be substituted by non-state actors and NGOs. Those who advocate this model have recently learnt to their disappointment that this kind of unrepresentative, planted and dictated democracy promoted by the imperial humanitarian masters of the West in their witch-hunt for the cave-man Bin Laden isn’t quite possible in Bangladesh.
Having said that, Duduk has shown utter incompetence in processing law suits against arrested corrupt politicians who might now be let loose as their trials remain incomplete while public sentiment against the injustices of the caretaker mounts and the politics of victimization-by-the-army begins. This will open the doors to truly corrupt individuals like Mosaddek Ali Falus and Nazmul Hudas of BNP to politically escape their guilt by claiming solidarity with Tarek Rahman for serving sentences at the same time. The 200 or so MPs with serious corruption charges might also take advantage of discrediting the corruption drive of Duduk and that will be a real travesty for the country after paying the price of 1/11.
July 30, 2008 at 9:36 pm
When I hear the political-judicial jargons “Independence of Judiciary and everyone are equal in the eye of all laws” of the present PIG [paramilitary interim government] I wonder to see how they have tought us what is meant by independent judiciary and how ugly, impotent and ineffective so called independent judiciary can be under PIG? And how different and multiple eyes there can be hidden in one blind big eye of our law and judiciary!
We see MPs, miniters, some political leaders includindg their wives and kids are punished within short time by setting special courts,l for five, ten, fifteen, twenty and so on years for trivial crimes or faults like keeping wine bottle for entertaining foreign guests, or getting some relief Sharees or corrugated CI sheets or pet deer or peacock in their possessions. While the most notorious criminal and corrupt leader like Sheik Hasina was released giving grandeur of protocol, utmost pleasure and gratitude of goverment to Her excellency. Four advisers met her in her SudaShadan, Cheif was talked to her by phone and the Bangladeshi diplomats gave her state protocol abroad. She was released by executive order on humanatarian ground for alleged problem of eyes and ears whereas Tarique, a prominent potential youth leader was crippled in remand. Though he can’t stand and sit up and have no sleep due to excruciating pain despite all antianalgesics he is not sent abroad for treatment, rather bound to attend court in stretcher. What kind of examplary cruelty they are showing to the Zia family and what kind of human sense this PIG has!
They are doing mockery with every sense of morality and human values.
If Sheik Hasina can be released, there should no person in Bangladesh or in any other country in the world rot in jail because who in the world can be compared with Hasina for corruption! Who in the world including all the presidents, president and prime-ministers, has the twin brand new BMP jeeps in possession each costing ~ fiver crore takas except Sheik Hasina? I can challenge nobody can cite any such name other than Hasina. This is just one and there such scores examples of corruption and criminality of Sheik Hasina and now she is at large and roaming around the planet.
This is what we see in the name of Jeehad against corruption, one eye of laws and model of leveled playing field, the prime excuse of Hijacking power by GMUA.
Yet, I don’t get dissappointed as I know ‘Paap Baapke-ou Chaarena and eventually truth is to be triumphant’.
Thanks.