Discuss anything that you deem important or ask question to uv bloggers.
Bangladesh: A Democracy Suspended
Tazreena Sajjad wrote the following after attending an event in Washington DC last week.
It has some very interesting insights worth exploring. Thanks Tazreena for sharing this with us.
D.C. has, for the most part, remained quiet about the recent spate of
political events in Bangladesh. Not surprising of course. There are a
slew of issues around which lectures and talks take place, and the
developments in Bangladesh have not demanded a public forum for
discussion. Nevertheless, sponsored by the U.S. Bangladesh Advisory
Council and the South Asian Studies in Paul H. Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, the
Bangladeshi expatriate community came together for a discussion on
Bangladesh: A Democracy in Crisis. The panelists included Stanley
Kochanek, Professor Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University, Dr.
Gowher Rizvi, director of the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance
and Innovation at Harvard University and Dr Junaid Ahmad, Sector
Manager for decentralization, local government reform and state
formation in South Asia for the World Bank. The event was moderated
by Ambassador William Milam, who served as the U.S. Ambassador from
1990-1993 and is now the Senior Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars.
Read more…
Remembering April 29: The deadly sea and the sea angels
I was a student of Chittagong medical College, when the cyclone of April 29 hit coastal Chittagong. It was drizzles all day, winds were gaining momentum as night fell on Chittagong. When I came out of the library building around 9 PM, the winds were quite strong, campus was deserted, and hospital lobby was empty. I had to stay over in the hospital that night because the road connecting the hospital and the student’s dorm on the other side of the hill was too unsafe for walking in that storm. Falling trees, flying debris were everywhere. As night progressed, storm got fierce and fiercer, as if the immense 6 story quarter mile long building will fall apart. As I took shelter in a bed at the sick student’s ward, it was a scary sleepless night. We, half a dozen stranded souls, kept waiting for the morning only to see utter devastation of the medical college campus. The beautiful hilly tree lined campus was in ruins, 50% of all the large trees were uprooted, and power lines were all over. The hospital, the highest tertiary health care-trauma center for all of southern Bangladesh was totally ineffective as the fallen trees completely blocked all the roads including that to the emergency.
Democracy: 4/25, the D-Day?
Amazing things are happening. Compared to even one week ago, the changes are quite dramatic.
1. Politicians are talking quite loudly. Neither the ban on indoor politics has been removed nor has SOE been lifted. Surprisingly, these same politicians were stone quite even when there was a dire need for them to speak out. At that time they cited the ban on indoor politics as reason of their silence.
2. Media has opened up. There was no one to participate in Tritiyo Matra last week. Tritiyo matra started taking single interview of unknown persons. At one point they had to do a program with Singer Shuvro Dev and ex cricketer Raqibul Hassan debating. Suddenly politicians are returning and talking evil of current government. No more SMS about Sheikh Hasina statements. Hasina-Khaleda’s pictures have re-occupied the leading first page spot where CinC’s picture has moved downwards.
Read more…
Democracy Series: Doomed Democracy?
[Dear friends: A superb post by the newest DP blogger Jyoti and another equally amazing write up by our own Asif has sparked up a much needed discussion on the real obligations of democracy and a true representation of society. With an intention to keep up the discussion on democracy, in this 'Democracy series', I intend to repost some older write ups as well as come up with some new. I'll start with this post which was written during last days of BNP government. Re-reading it now, I hope, will help us grab the real value of a democratic society.
Sincerely: RA ]
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Doomed Democracy?
Let’s start with USA, the icon of democracy. The president of this country was initially elected by a Supreme Court decision, not by public vote. And although it was a head to head election, the person bagging more votes did not win the election. And over the last six years, on the plea of war against terrorism, basic principles of democracy and liberty are being compromised one after another.
Then go to UK, the birth place of this industrialized democratic civilization. The elected prime minister is more influenced by a leader of a different country on the other side of the Atlantic than his own constituency and his own colleagues in the parliament.
In the rest of the democratic Europe, conservative, more authoritative hawkish parties are winning the election.
A man is ruling a continent called Australia and he is also apparently more inclined to appease the king of world than his own people.
Read more…
On democracy
In this post, I argue the case for democracy, starting with some abstract ideas and then relating them to today’s Bangladesh. Nothing here is original, but reading some comments over the past few days, I feel that it is worth reiterating various arguments for democracy.
This is an offshoot of a human rights organization, so I’ll begin with rights.
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed … with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. … [T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted … deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed … whenever … Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government…
A Few Good Men (and women)?
“Perspectives need to be reshaped and redefined. And one way of doing that is through hearing the voices of the young”, says DS in its intro for the roundtable it did to find out what the younger chaps in desh are thinking. But how are you going to “reshape and redefine perspective” when you are perfectly happy to just interact with people who are just like you? Going through the list of participants in the roundtable, the first thing that struck me was how undiversified the group was. This was a group of people who probably bump into each other in social gatherings on a weekly basis. Yes, I am talking about the representation of the wider spectrum of the society in such talks. For a change, it was refreshing to see the young bloods in the round table. But when at the end of the discussion with the youth reps of Bangladesh, the moderator says, “One thing that did not come up today is employment. There is a large number of youth in Bangladesh. How can we employ them? The unemployment problem is pushing people into drugs and crime. This needs to be addressed. “, you just know there is something wrong with the representation in that talk. Read more…
The Plan B
The plan A against the two hated/beloved political leaders of the country has apparently failed. This failure has not only derailed the efforts of CTG and their backers to redesign Bangladesh politics, it has exposed the lack of coordination, lack of planning, chaos and restlessness within the government.
This failure could be a lesson to learn from.
But I doubt the backers of the CTG will take lesson from the failure of plan A and I feel they will now try heavy-handedly to impose plan B.
I suspect that the plan B of this powerful quarter to get the country rid of these two major political party leaders will be to implicate them with corruption/violence and blackmail them into jail sentence or worse. And news items in today’s newspapers like this one reporting inquiry of these leaders’s bank account suggest that the steps towards plan B have already started.
Boro chacha grumbled and Hasina ban is lifted
Update: Within hours after posting the news on boro chacha, the following happened.
Dhaka, April 25 (bdnews24.com) – The military-backed government Wednesday lifted the ban on Sheikh Hasina’s homecoming and said there were no restrictions on Khaleda Zia’s movement.
In a statement, the home ministry said the ban on Hasina’s return was temporary and the authorities have decided to lift it because of “views from the media and other quarters“.
In another statement, the ministry said the government had never put pressure on Khaleda to leave the country.
[posted before the ban was lifted ]
Daily Press Briefing
Sean McCormack, Spokesman
Washington, DC
April 24, 2007
QUESTION: Sean, two questions on Bangladesh, please. The [Caretaker
Government] in Bangladesh has cancelled elections and also is trying to
establish dictatorship just similar to in Pakistan by General Musharraf. And
a Vice Prime Minister is under house arrest in Bangladesh, second one fled
to London and she has not been allowed and she has been told you cannot
return to Bangladesh. What’s the Secretary feel now as their human rights
and dictatorships and also democracy that we’re talking about around the
globe?
Read more…
Bubble boys, the green zone and the other 99%
[republished from archive ]
Recently a reader lamented about Scholastica principal Yasmin Murshid’s role in creating the top English medium school for the elites and lambasted her for not doing much for the shattered education system in Bangladesh. This is a dangerous track he was heading to. I wouldn’t blame the entrepreneurs for their successes in a free market. It’s self righteous to say that they are evil simply because our education system is in shambles and they didn’t do anything for the industry. Even providing good education for one single student is a contribution of hers in the society. So there is nothing to criticize about why she didn’t do more. Can we say that I hate Doctor Yunus because he could have done more to stop this political madness in our country, but he didn’t? May be we can have our abhiman about him, but certainly it is not up to a few individuals to fix the malaise of the society.
