[27SEP] Bangladesh Update HEADLINES
- Excerpts: Strong Leaders, Dictators, and Columbia: Along with the usual array of accomplished presidents and prime ministers, this year, Columbia's World Leaders Forum is hosting Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed, the chief adviser of the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh. Ever since his pseudomilitary regime took office in Dhaka, rampant human rights violations have become the state's hallmark. Before questioning his place at the Forum, it is worth taking a look at recent events in Bangladesh. The unusual electoral process of Bangladesh requires an outgoing government to hand over power to a nonpartisan administration for three months to prepare for polls. This process failed when the last elected government installed a bunch of puppets to hold a farcical election. As a result, massive protests led to the military stepping in and establishing a government comprised of retired bureaucrats and ex-military officers. They promised to clean up the corrupt political system and hold elections, but the prospect of change evaporated as the government started handpicking whom to prosecute for corruption, and toward whom to turn a blind eye. The latter group was comprised almost exclusively of members and leaders of the powerful fundamentalist political elements who had little electoral chance, yet whose leaders roam in Bangladeshi politics using piles of money procured from global fundamentalist networks. Under the state of emergency rules, the regime suspended fundamental rights and prohibited the media from publishing critical stories, and military officers briefed news editors. Military camps were set up in every major university and the army started ordering around university administrations.....MORE
- Excerpts: Bangladesh: Army faces first taste of dissent; A fall-out of the campus rumpus was the demand for the restoration of "indoor" political activity. The demand has since been conceded after denying that right to politicians since January. It was acts such as these that appear to have created the "pressure cooker" effect that blew its gasket mid-August. Civil society and intellectual leaders have lent support to the demand for the opening of a dialogue between the interim government and the decapitated political parties. Perhaps because of the general perception that after having removed several layers of leaders from the major political entities the regime had begun to be looked upon as one seeking to create a "king's party" of unrepresentative elements from the major political entities. A kind of vacuum has been created by the removal of the two lady stalwarts and their heirs apparent—a situation ripe for the kind of spontaneous explosion as occurred at the Dhaka University football ground. While there are demands for the restoration of political activity it has been conceded that the basic premise of "clean politics" as advocated by the Caretaker Government has found resonance in acceptance that political entities should be registered, political funding regulated and intra-party democracy encouraged. More particularly, calls have been heard for elections to the local bodies like the upazila and the districts along with statutory protecting against interference in their working by Members of Parliament. This last is intended to clip the potential for corruption.....MORE
- Excerpts: Why politics matters, and always; When, therefore, you speak of politics in Bangladesh today, you are quite liable to be asked for some answers to questions that arise in your soul. And those questions will rear their heads because of the battering that politics has lately been getting in this country. It is the politician today who is at the receiving end of it all. The politician, it is being argued with a fairly good degree of regularity but with not much of persuasion, has been responsible for all the ailments the national body politic has been suffering from over the years. Bad administration, a politicisation of the institutions of state, et al, are all failings, the responsibility for which has been laid, consistently, at the door of the politician. But look around you, around the entire canvas that has spread itself over the last two decades, perhaps even more. And you will perhaps stumble on the truth that it is not the politician who needs to be censured for everything that has gone wrong in the lives of the Bengalis. A somewhat slight degree of introspection will be revealing of the thought that everything of significance, every act of noble note that has been observed in Bangladesh has come from the politician. It was the political class that inaugurated the drive for nationalism in the 1960s, with results that have done all of us proud. Whatever radicalism (and radicals are often necessary when vested interests threaten to get the better of us) has come into the Bengali soul has been a direct offshoot of the struggle for self-determination that our politicians put up in the Pakistan era.......MORE
- Excerpts: The myth of the anti-corruption drive; The TI representative argues that 2006's corruption was so bad that the "anti-corruption" drive from 2007 has only so far overcome the negative data. He also blamed the perception of the business community in the wake of the "anti-corruption" drive for the low score. I am compelled to remind the TI representative in Bangladesh that the TI index tracks the perception of corruption, not corruption itself (hence the name Corruption Perceptions Index). Therefore the perception of the business community is not a mitigating factor to explain away the CPI score, it is the score. The military government has used the "anti-corruption" drive as justification for its political purges. It has been repeatedly stated that corruption must be tackled before free and fair elections can be held. Chief Advisor Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed boasted to Time magazine earlier this year that because his government did not suffer from "political patronage" they were better corruption fighters....MORE
- Excerpts: Diversity Visa Program is 'Open Door' for Terrorists, Says Investigation; Consular officers screen all visa applications for security concerns. But a diversity visa "applicant with no previous record in U.S. government agency databases or an applicant who is using a false identity may not be detected as a potential security concern," the report said. "A 2002 cable from the U.S. embassy in Dhaka (Bangladesh) stated the ease with which individuals can obtain genuine identity documents in any assumed identity, including passports, creates an 'open door' for terrorists wishing to enter the United States with legal status," the report continued. The GAO further said, "State does not have a strategy to address the pervasive fraud reported by some posts. ... While State believes some legislative changes could mitigate fraud in the DV program, it has not made any formal proposals to this effect....MORE
- Excerpts: Govt should restrain Islamists; We cannot afford to ignore the fact that the intimidating threat of the Islamist groups to attack Prothom Alo's offices again came after the daily's editor repeatedly admitted mistake, took punitive measures against the department concerned, offered unqualified public apology more than once and appealed to the agitating Islamists for compassion, which is said to be an inherent component of historical Islam, and after the Saptahik 2000's unilateral withdrawal of its particular issue from the market, apprehending that the issue might hurt the religious sentiment of the Muslims. Why are, then, the Islamist political groups reacting so sharply, and that too in such an organised way, particularly when the groups are sharply divided over interpretations of Islam in many areas, while none of the groups did utter a single word when Kishore Kontho, a magazine of an Islamist party, had published a similar, if not the same, cartoon sometime ago? The reason, we believe, is simple: The Islamists are simply using the Prothom Alo-Saptahik 2000 incidents as a pretext, particularly under emergency where all the democratic forces are barred to conduct overt political activities, to advance their common obscurantist politics, which eventually aims at setting up of a theocratic state in Bangladesh – a programme....MORE
- Excerpts: No Ray of Sunshine- Hizb-Ut-Tahrir; Most of these HuTs are young men who have been recruited from private universities and this means that they are the products of relatively privileged backgrounds. There are many life and death issues which you would think would offend the sensibilities of Khilafa-glorifying students that would compel them to hit the streets in protest. A cursory glance at their literature would suggest that they would be protesting the parlous state of the schooling system, the lack of wealth distribution, the lack of jobs for graduates, secularism, usury in the banking system and so on. All of which, I would have thought, would rate highly in the `Offensive Charts' if you were a Khilafist. But no. Instead, they're protesting a minor cartoonist's affectionate parody of Muslim naming customs. This was the offence to the Prophet Muhammed and Muslim-majority Bangladesh to some and an example of "evil forces out to destabilise the country" to others high up in Authority....MORE
Links Only
- Bangladesh 7th most corrupt country: Transparency International
- Dhaka improves on its graft image
- Multinationals fuel graft in poor states: watchdog
- Metro rail work before power handover in Bangladesh
- Community radio on way in Bangladesh
- Banks asked to deal cautiously with politically exposed persons
- Bangladesh court issues arrest warrants against ex-ministers
- Khaleda concerned at fresh case against Tarique
- 62 sued for patronising militants
- Bangladesh's economists question corruption perception index
- CPB won't join 14-party
- No permission to celebrate the Birth day Of Sheikh Hasina
- Bird flu forces Bangladesh to cull chickens
- Doing business gets tougher in Bangladesh: Survey
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