Despite mutual understanding on Sunday night, the tussle between the civil administration and ruling party leaders in Barishal has blatantly exposed the fragile structure of the government.
In the face of widespread criticism along with a total collapse of civic activities for the last four days (from 19 to 22 August), the high-ups of the government frantically tried to find out a win-win solution for both the quarrelling parties.
In line with the invented formula, the Barishal civil administration and police sat in a meeting with local Awami League leaders at divisional commissioner’s residence, and apparently agreed not to continue with the conflict anymore. Terming it “misunderstanding”, both sides also decided to withdraw cases filed against each other.
The conflict or disagreement – what it may be called – is nothing new between the lower tier of civil administration and politically empowered local public representatives. Especially, the Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO), the Officer-in-Charge of local police station and chairman of Upazila or Union Parishad could seldom agree on any work of public importance.
For such uncanny attitudes, there is allegedly no chain of command in the local government level. Usually, corruption and irregularities are a common phenomenon among the administrative officials and local people’s representatives centering on the allocated funds for development works and aid for the poor.
Mainly, divergence grows when a UNO tries to overlap a Union Parishad chairman and local ruling party leaders try to bossing over the admin and police officials. The situation is more sensitive at the district level where Deputy Commissioners and Superintendents of Police often stand on the opposite side of MPs for the same reasons.
But this time, the incident of Barishal has created huge sensation when top level administrative cadres and central ruling party leaders got involved, directly or indirectly. Mayor of Barishal City Corporation Serniabat Sadiq Abdullah is the son of Awami League leader Abul Hasanat Abdullah. So, he managed to get sympathy from a large section of ruling party leaders.
On the other hand supporting Barishal Sadar UNO Munibur Rahman, Bangladesh Administrative Service Association – whose president is incumbent Senior Secretary Kabir Bin Anwar — gave a statement against political persons using some derogatory remarks. However, the secretaries have so far disagreed with the content of the statement given by the Bangladesh Administrative Service Association.
On Monday, Cabinet Secretary Khandker Anwarul Islam said that all parties — the field administration, law enforcement agencies and public representatives — have been asked to communicate regularly to avoid misunderstanding as recently seen in Barishal.
The Barishal incident clearly indicates that all parties think they are superior to others and they are the main functionary of the government. Such an attitude is the prime reason for inviting unwanted incidents. Besides, the culture of impunity for any sort misdeed has made them much more aggressive.
Politicisation of civil administration and law enforcement agencies involving them in dirty power play, particularly in vote rigging, have created such sense of disbelief and dishonour towards the political leaders. The culture of impunity makes them over confident not to care political leaders.
