Some Odd Things Regarding BD Politics

Some Odd Things Regarding BD Politics

Ernesto Guevara

 

Rcently BNP-Jamat has realized after some ground surveys that they will fare terribly in the upcoming December 2008 polls in Bangladesh. According to Daily Bhorer Kagoj, 13th November, BNP-Jamat has a chance of victory only in Chittagong. And so they are spending time devising new strategies to delay the polls. If we observe their activities — yes they are actively pursuing the delaying program. Now they have added Hajj as an issue. However, the BNP-Jamat bloc says that the real issue is that they suspect the neutrality of the Election Commision. Is the EC neutral?

 

Recently Khaleda (BNP) and Hasina (AL), have decided (been forced?) to sit for talks. BNP wants talks to be private while AL wants public talks — televised. The talks if not televised will not be private… they will only be private from the people. However, it can only be assumed that foreign diplomats and governments will be privvy to the details of the discussion. So why keep Bangladeshi people out of the loop? The people of Bangladesh surely has had enough of ‘secret talks’… What does Khaleda and BNP want to hide from the people. Are they planning to use unfair means to get their wish? Are they expecting undue help from foreingers? I say the people have a right to see what is being discussed — Khaleda and Hasina are not parents and the people are not underage minors. It is the future of the nation — and the people are the nation! No sneakiness should be allowed by the Bangladeshi people. Long has Bangladesh lived at the feet of other nations… the leaders have not been able to raise the country’s image and economy…  The leaders cannot be allowed to have secrets from the people. The people should know what is going on. Or the leaders who want to operate in the shadow should exit the stage!

 

Recently I observed something else that was odd. I am no fan of Hasina but I must say many in Bangladesh are. Over a million — around a million and a half people gathered to welcome her when she returned to Bangladesh. Though I think personally that this support is undue, it was a spectacular event. An unprecedented event… but the newspapers downplayed it subtley. The words used in the reports are not untrue but hides the true size of the welcome. Some newspapers reported ‘thousands’ — which implies less than 10 thousand people; a couple reported 100s of thousands — implying less than a million. Some avoided the reception gathering altogether as if it did not happen. Was there a secret government instruction to the newspapers — or are they hired by those opposed to Hasina.

 

Then something else happened — odd. Khaleda had been having secret talks with Hossain Zillur Rahman, an advisor of the current military government. Then she rushed off to Chittagong to hold a rally. The rally drew a lot of people and though they were all gathered together, unlike the AL reception, the number paled in comparision to Hasina’s reception. Though it was a remarkable gathering — it was transformed into a ‘show stealer’ by news papers. Newspapers were aglow in reporting the event. Odd.

 

So why this bias reporting? And why was Khaleda’s showdown not in Dhaka?

 

If one intends to compare the two parties — they would be overwhelmed by AL’s showdown but if they search in the news — they would not be overwhelmed. They would find two equally popular parties — more or less, with BNP a bit larger. So if BNP performs better than what its smaller rally implies — and AL does worse than what their showdown implies — people wont be so shocked, as in the media they were evenly matched.

This implies that the door for a questionable election remains. If the news had been reported neutrally — election engineering would have been more blatant, difficult and more unacceptable.

 

Why not in Dhaka?

If BNP’s showdown were in Dhaka — it would have been easier to compare… and newspapers would not have had a free poetic lisence. Easier to pull the wool over the people’s eyes with the new location?

 

Why? Is the election commission and the govt really neutral? What do they want? Who helped organise the rally?

 

Personally I hope that people forget parties and start looking at candidates forcing both alliances to choose better candidates… and eventually get rid of half educated, ill-educated, corrupt, divisive and religiously extreme politicians who are servants not of the people but of money and foreign paymasters.

 

Che

---

Etnesto Guenara is a member of Mukto-Mona and writes from Bangladesh. He can be reached at cheguevara28@yahoo.com

Bangladesh is not quite out of the woods from Islamists’ attack!

Bangladesh is not quite out of the woods from Islamists’ attack!

A.H. Jaffor Ullah

There must have been a gaping hole in Bangladesh’s homeland security for the last 22 months or so when the military backed “caretaker” government comprising of some oligarchs and technocrats came to power on January 11, 2007.

To prove unequivocally that the army-backed government means business, six Islamists who were captured during the previous government were railroaded to walk to their gallows when many people requested the government to allow the convicted Islamists to talk to the press.  But the government of Fakhruddin Ahmed (the “caretaker” government) was nonchalance.  It ignored the plea of the civil society and let the convicted Islamists take their secrets to grave.  Thus, the people of Bangladesh were deprived of the full account of a vile conspiracy that runs deep in various agencies, civilian and armed forces, of the government.  The Islamists of Bangladesh are not that capable of blasting their homemade crude bombs without their silent conspirators from political parties, members of the intelligence communities, and the armed forces.

Granted that the army-backed “caretaker” government had tightened the screws a bit on Islamists; consequently, the cottage industries of bomb-making in four corners of Bangladesh came to a screeching halt in the last 22 months.  The civil society thus heaved a great sigh of relief knowing that terrorist outfits such as Jama’atul Mujahideen of Bangladesh (JMB) is made infirm by government’s rapid action.  The police and its elite force, RAB, are on the constant lookout for Islamists while they are responding to any information with a lightening speed.  All of these measures taken up by the government had led a bulk of the Bangladeshis to believe that a semblance of normalcy had finally returned to this impoverished nation of 165 million people, which was rocked by terrorists’ made bomb blast since 1999.

However, from time to time the police and intelligence department had rounded up people in and around the capital city of Dhaka who were in possession of illegal firearms and bomb making paraphernalia.  The news of the arrests would certainly make the headlines in the newspapers and TV news but as time passes by without any incidence of bomb blasts, the general public will forget the danger thinking wishfully that the Islamists, who want to transform this society into an Islamic paradise, have been taken out of commission, and therefore, the nation is free from any foreseeable attack.

To the utter disbelief of many, most leading newspapers of Bangladesh carried a sensational news on November 17, 2008 depicting a photo that showed an array of bomb making paraphernalia, which the police say they found in a house located not too far from the capital.  The news account says that the tip came from an arrested JMB member hardly a day ago.  The police also seized about 40kg of nitric acid, 150 cases of improvised grenades, a large quantity of bomb-making materials and equipment, and over 2,000 books on jihad raiding two houses in Mirpur and another house at Shanir Akhra, the two suburbs of Dhaka city.  One police officer also mentioned to the newsmen that the Islamists were preparing for a fresh attack.  We all know that Islamists have the penchant for attacking on secular national holidays such as The World Language Day and Bangla New Years Celebration Day.

There is an adage that says where there’s one cockroach, you can be sure there are plenty more. The police in Bangladesh were very lucky to unearth one bomb making factory; however, who knows how many more like this are scattered allover Bangladesh?  Mind you, the Islamists like Siddiqul Islam (aka Bangla Bhai), JMB chief Abdur Rahman and four more JMB terrorists, who were forced to walk to their gallows, had flourished during the reign of Khaleda Zia’s term spanning 2001 through 2006.  During this period some of the parliamentary members belonging to BNP had given the needed protection and cover to the JMB men in western districts of Bangladesh where a reign of terror were let loose by Bangla Bhai’s foot soldiers.  And that was not all.  The JMB men celebrated the “success” of their operations by bringing out a motorcade procession in Rajshahi town while getting support from the divisional police chief.  Well, such was the nexus between the Islamic terrorists and the law and order department hardly 3-4 years ago!

It is quite plausible that the JMB men still have an active network; therefore, the people of Bangladesh will be deluding if they think that JMB terrorist organization was beaten to dust by the government’s action.
The government’s recent action to demolish art works including statues outside the International Airport revealing Bangladesh’s indigenous culture of folk music will give a mixed signal to Islamists who chose terrorism as a means to destabilize the society and tear the very secular fabrics that bind the entire population.  It was a mistake on government’s part to yield to the demands of the Islamists.  By kowtowing the Islamists what purpose is served?  Maybe, I am missing something a big time here!

The government should ponder over the facts that despite a number of major arrests made during crackdowns on Islamist militants in the last few years, the intelligence department officials think that over 250 trained operatives of JMB are still at large and many of them are reportedly trying to regroup under a new leadership.  It should be a matter of grave concern to the government that even the police have the slightest of clues about the source of funding, the emerging leaderships, and the future plan of attack by the fugitive JMB operatives. 

In summary, the news of a bomb making factory in the outskirts of Dhaka should not be taken lightly by the government or the civil society.  The government certainly had railroaded the 6 super bosses of the JMB outfit, but the political conviction of many JMB supporters still lingers in their mind and so is the zealotry that serves as the engine of hate and that fuels a promise leading up to the false notion that someday Bangladesh miraculously will be converted into an Islamic Utopia.
———————–
Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist, writes from New Orleans, USA