When in an African country like Kenya its President has no difficulty in accepting the judgement of the court that annulled his election victory that should be enough for our government to be ashamed of for the angry rhetoric used against the judgement of the Supreme Court declaring an amendment of the Constitution as unconstitutional.
The sitting President of Kenya said he did not agree with the verdict but nevertheless he would accept the court’s ruling. What is interesting is that even the United Nations observers found the election had the acceptability.
It is known to all that Philippines is under one of the most fearful dictators who have killed hundreds of people in the name of fighting drug problem. There also the elected Senate had no fear to ask his son and son-in-law to appear before it to face the charges of drug related crimes.
In our country for the judgement on protecting the independence of the judiciary, no election was set aside or nobody had lost job. Nevertheless the government was furious and used all sorts of contemptuous language against the judges more so against the Chief Justice Mr S.K Sinha.
The retiring Attorney General of Brazil did not allow fear to stand in the way of pursuing corruption charges against the current President together with filing criminal charges against two former presidents for running the country like a criminal enterprise. It was horrid of me to be impatient with my friend and an eminent freedom fighter General Ibrahim (Rtd) Bir Pratik when he was not ready to go public himself for the missing of his party’s Secretary. Secret missing is the worst kind of insecurity of life that befalls a person. My idea of a freedom fighter is a fearless fighter for freedom for anybody and everybody for whom he fought the war of freedom.
The situation in the country is bleak. So leaderless and so anarchic that only the people with no sense of patriotism or conscience can live joyfully unconcerned. The public suffering for the mess and mismanagement is everywhere for everyone to see. The foreigners who reluctantly come to our country find the trolleys at the Dhaka Int’l Airport are not where luggage come for collection.
The overwhelming police power has created sickness of fear in the minds of the people long yearned and suffered for securing freedom.
Blaming ex-Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia or the present Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina alone cannot be right. They were not trying to be where they are now. They do not want to go back where they were. Addiction to power develops easily.
George Washington, a founding father of America, refused to accept the offer of lifelong presidency. His argument was that one must not be in power for too long to be affected by the addiction of power. One who has not the future of the country in mind is not a politician.
Freedom is not for those who do not have the courage to unshackle themselves from the dark sickness of fear.
Most of us feel sad and sorry for the vanishing respectability and decency from our public life followed by its unavoidable repercussion on our social life. As there is no accountability, the people in public life feel no obligation to show civility expected in a civilised nation.
Bangabandhu reminded the public functionaries in more than one public meetings to respect the people as their master and serve them humbly. Surely, he did not exclude the ministers or members of the parliament whose expenses are also borne by the people.
The ways of politics shown by great political leaders like Husseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, AK Fazlul Haq and Moulana Bhasani are forgotten in favour of wisdom of the retired and abandoned technocrats to make politics impossible for the politicians.
What every politician worth his name knows that end of power politics does end brutal struggle for power. Either the politics of the country will be tolerant to dissent or politics of intolerant violence will grow as the other alternative. The police force shall remain busy fighting forces of violent politics called terrorism but for no results.
Preparations of making bombs or gathering of weapons are not a sign of peaceful times. Dangerous crimes like killing, rape and kidnapping for extortion are frequent affairs. One has to be lucky not to be a victim of abuse of power in their own country. The people are helpless and unprotected. Police are not as they were or supposed to be. Many are politicised and feel like politicians. Our police are efficient but cannot save themselves from misdirected politics.
Bangladesh has become isolated internationally is clear from the fact on the crisis faced by Bangladesh with the surge of Rohingya refugees. All the three countries considered by our government their closest friends have been supporting openly the Myanmar government. All the support and sympathy are coming from the Western countries which are considered enemies by our government since the inception of Bangladesh.
Our government is wrong in many ways for lack of political leadership.
