The government is also being misled into believing that we have reached the stage of a developing country. A long way to go to attain that stage in 2024. So only hope has been expressed if we are ready to do things necessary.
The UN body’s recommendation that Bangladesh now qualifies to become a developing nation by 2024 should be taken as big responsibility. But the government made it a huge celebration of all sections of the government while deliberately excluding private sector people whose contribution alone made it possible to overcome the status of the least developed country.
So far as the government’s contribution is concerned it cannot be denied it is rather more marked by the destruction of the banking system by unprecedented looting of public money with impunity. The Stock Exchange is lifeless. It cannot be denied that the spread of corruption is politically motivated inasmuch as the government is dependent on corrupt elements in every field while it is unable to depend on public support and free election. Let the government departments functioning properly. Police protecting the VIPs will not do alone.
The celebration on Thursday all over the country also made it compulsory for school students to join.
It is no doubt a happy occasion for all of us if we are prepared to accept the challenges of graduating to a developing county by the year 2024.
The government took the occasion to claim its ‘big success’ in running the country towards higher level of growth. Firstly this level of growth does not speak of success of any particular government because the economic growth was achieved over long years.
Everybody, other than bureaucrats happily misleading the government, will agree that for economic growth the need of good governance is an essential prerequisite. There is terrible division among the people created by the government by its intolerant politics. There cannot be the rule of law without independent judiciary but the government is not ready to tolerate the judiciary for its independence. Nobody can expect foreign good investment unless the investors know there is the protection of rule of law. Some people may feel attracted to the corrupt government for making easy money.
The UN body believed that the country will be able to achieve good governance, reduce unemployment and income gap of between the mega rich the dirt poor. It also believed government will be the people’s government and not run by corrupt ones for their selfish gains. The government will allow the Anti-Corruption Commission to probe against government corruption.
But the report by Bertelsmann Stifftung on Friday has seriously undermined the government claim when it said Bangladesh is a country that no longer meets the minimum standard for democracy and is already under autocratic rule with at least four others.
They are Lebanon, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Uganda in this category. It said democracy has been undermined in Bangladesh and the rest four countries for years and the shortcomings often are in the quality of elections that tipped the balance away from democratic rule. Bangladesh has already crossed the threshold to join other autocracies.
Needless to say Bangladesh is known for gross human rights violation now all over the world such as forced disappearance, extra-judicial killing, torture and death in police custody are rampant. Public safety is in danger at all level in absence of good governance under an oppressive political regime. The government is virtually running a one party system where the opposition parties have no political space to freely speak out in the public
But it appears the government is trying to bury its failures by hastily arranging celebration of ‘big economic success.’ Many believe if there is any big success the nation has achieved, the country’s private sector achieved despite many odd in the fields of job creation, exports and remittance by expatriate workers.
Had there been able leadership, good governance and an efficient bureaucracy with some control over corruption and massive misuse of public money, the country would have made way to a developing nation status much before.
It is indeed shame for Bangladesh to be identified as an autocratic nation when people had liberated the country to make it a democratic nation. The government slogan such as ‘democracy for development’ is a deceitful slogan to make common people fool while powerful people are routinely breaking banks and looting financial institutions moving money abroad to amass illegal wealth.
The German think-tank has revealed the cruel truth; which suggests celebration of development is eyewash when the nation should rather seriously think how to end autocracy and reestablish democracy. Without democracy inclusive development that accrues to common people is not possible.
