AWAMI League’s Narsingdi district unit has expelled Tamanna Nusrat Bubly, an MP from the seats reserved for women, accusing her of belittling the ruling party by using proxy in BA tests. The organisational unit in a meeting cancelled her membership and sacked her as the Women Affairs Secretary of the District Committee on Friday. Bangladesh Open University had in October expelled her, and cancelled her registration and examinations after investigation into media reports on the allegation. Bubly is the widow of the then Narsingdi Municipality Mayor and Awami League leader Lokman Hossain, who was assassinated in a gun attack in 2011. She has a Higher Secondary Certificate and got admitted to the BOU’s BA course for graduation. According to media reports, she had been in Dhaka but sent other people to eight exams as proxy candidates, one of whom was caught red-handed in the act.
It is unfortunate that a sitting MP had to resort to cheating to pass a simple graduation exam. Before she had done so she should have looked into the fact that if found out it would be disgraceful both to her party and to the nation as a whole. In terms of moral precedent it sets a bad standard—if MPs cheat then so can the entire nation, presumably. And that is what precisely what we are doing-police are reluctant to arrest people without authorisation from high-ups, doctors feel no compunctions about prescribing masses of tests to make more money, lawyers are quite intent to prolong cases to improve their revenues, teachers fail students so that they can teach them privately for more income. A nation which can’t educate itself properly is bound to fail–if we can’t look for the greater good but subsume it for our narrow pecuniary interests then it will become difficult for us to succeed. We may progress economically for a brief period of time but are sure to fail in the long run.
Bubly’s cheating is not an isolated incident and also not a matter of surprise to us. In fact, incidents of cheating have been occurring in every sphere of life almost every day. The nation has also been cheated by the wrong politics.
