With popular election is banished, the people have lost control over the government and their own destiny. That in a free country the people are the master of their destiny has ceased to be meaningful in Bangladesh. The people as a whole have become helpless victims of greedy politics of no accountability.
We have politics without political ideals or principles. The relationship between political leaders and politicians is nothing more or less than employers and employees. Political commitment for political ideals or values is not a consideration for claiming to be a politician. Gratitude for the job giver is all that is necessary. The system has turned politics into business for personal gain instead of selfless service to the people. There is hardly a minister or MP who felt restrained to amass wealth using his or her political position.
What is most painful is that our own public servants are of no help to serve the people and protect the Constitution. The MPs and ministers are not the representatives of the people with any obligation to the people. As free people we cannot choose our own government. How worthless we can be?
An unelected government cuts at the very root of constitutional government. Another peculiarity of the unelected government is, it is being extravagant with corruption for its survival against the wish of the people.
We are witnessing how corruption has created multifaceted monsters all over the country to keep our people in constant fear of helplessness. No sector of the government is kept outside the allurement of corruption. What has followed is public servants are no more public servants to protect public interest. The public money and public wealth are spent unrestrained to create opportunities for corruption in high places of the government.
The power of the people’s vote has been replaced by the power of corruption.
The most unconscionable example of crime and corruption politics is the use of university students as ruthless criminals against political opponents. The students can run torture centres in the residential halls. A fellow student at BUET was beaten to death.
As if improvement of living conditions of general public is not development. To the government development of contract business of glitzy projects is real improvement of the country. These projects are undertaken but seem never to be completed so that more money continues to flow in for keeping happy those whose support is needed to keep the government in power.
While the miseries of economic hardship of the people are being sidelined, the government is boasting of unreliable GDP figures produced by the bureaucrats. As told by bureaucrats, the government is too happy with the GDP figures as development of the country.
The government should at the same time release information about how many of them have become multi-millionaires and how many have become poorer. Small businesses are grappling with acute problems of shrinking purchasing power of the people. In general the people’s welfare, their safety or powerlessness before police are not important concerns for the government to address.
Our development priority makes lives of common people harder in every way. As the people cannot be trusted by the government, the bureaucrats everywhere have become the most dependent power base of the government. So they must be kept happy. They do not have to serve as public servants. The whole idea of the government for the people has gone upside down. The people suffer deprivation because the government does not need their vote.
Criminalisation of politics means criminalisation of the entire system of government. The police cannot be trusted as law enforcers for giving people the protection of law. No law is a remedy if it can be arbitrarily abused. Abuse of police power can be freely indulged in by the police. When the police power is used for election victory of the government, the police know the extent of impunity they enjoy. Nobody can blame the police if they have the arrogance of being the source of enduring power for the government.
After years of mismanagement and corruption, the government has reached a dead end and the bureaucratic inertia is all too visible. There is short of funds. The big lies of success are proving hollow.
The government knows the change is in the air and time to look for safety is upon them. But they feel assured as the opposition is dead, so others are also. Change is a must but what is not a must that it has to be vengeful or anarchic. All depends on the government if they cooperate. The change could be through understanding, though I am not hopeful about such a prospect. It requires courage and political understanding to organise peaceful departure. So the things will happen thoughtlessly.
The government has trapped itself in a black hole. But in my judgment there is hope if patriotic forces come together to change the politics of plunder and injustice.
We must get back our pride of a free country.
