Cross Talk
Khaleda Zia's stencil tour of USA
Begum Khaleda Zia wants to return to power. Two times former prime minister of the country and the present leader of the opposition is within her rights to harbour that ambition, and the way this government is progressing its course it's not unlikely that, if luck favours, her wish could come true for a third time as well. But her whistle-stop tour of the offices of US politicians and bureaucrats during her visit to that country last month has been anticlimactic. She appeared powerless in the pictures of those meetings publicised back home.
She met with congressman Joseph Crowley, Assistant Secretary of South Asian Affairs Robert Blake and a few other congressmen. But her meetings with them looked more like desperately hashed chatting sessions, more for photo opportunities than constructive engagement. Needless to say we cannot vouch for what should have transpired in those meetings. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, then the appearance of those meetings we saw in the national dailies looked scantly convincing.
While all these busy people mustn't have sat down for nothing, the pictures looked awfully vacuous. They appeared more like coffee klatches than bilateral meetings. That Khaleda Zia couldn't meet with Hillary Clinton or any other US politician of similar standing was made sorely poignant by the pictures of those low-profile meetings.
Thus, this tour of Khaleda Zia is comparable to stencil work. The hollow stands out over the solid after one applies the pigment of one's imagination. Rule number one in image building: if one cannot show one's strengths, one should hide one's weaknesses. Those pictures shouldn't have appeared in the press. It would have been more meaningful to publish the pictures of the civic receptions accorded her in the United States.
In that regard, the leader of the opposition and the once-again aspiring prime minister has been ill advised. It is hard to tell how she must have been convinced to sit through those nondescript meetings. Not to say that posturing wasn't important for Khaleda Zia and her political party. But the second tier party leaders or her representatives could have attended on her behalf. She shouldn't have been dragged from pointless meeting to pointless meeting.
Because those meetings were protocol disasters. We know how it works with the only superpower in the world. Its leaders have their busy schedules. They have their whirlwind tours around the world. They have to police the entire world. Their hands are always full with so many problems with people in power that they hardly have any time to spare for the aspiring returnees to power.
But that is no excuse why a former prime minister should sit with the bottom rung of the ladder. Understood that those people have the ears of their bosses. Understood it was important to talk to them to get the message across to their superiors. It works like that everyday. When the boss is busy, the staff attends visitors.
Those who took Khaleda Zia to those meetings should have known better. It is said that a person is as big as her standing. The converse is also true when the standing ought to be as big as the person. Matching a person to her standing is called protocol.
In so much as it's necessary for our politicians to seek US blessing, the least they can do is maintain that protocol, or at least, a façade of it. The pictures we saw were devoid of either, and they made us wonder about our own standing as the citizens of a sovereign nation.
On May 25, when U.S. President Barack Obama visited the UK, Ian Bell wrote an article in Herald Scotland titled, "Why do we let a foreign power run our country?" Perhaps that idealistic question also resonates in many hearts around the world. But the reality is that they don't have a choice. It's one of the many elements of ontological despair that the strongest is always leader of the pack.
That is also a protocol unto itself. Yet the world revolves around unequal status. High has low. Strong has weak. Rich has poor. Big has small. What makes each graceful in its position is self-respect.
In that respect, Khaleda Zia's US tour was inadequate. It's not hard to tell what the purpose of her visit to the United States was. But what is the outcome? If it was an organising tour, it went well in New York though one in the Washington Metropolitan Area was mired by factionalism. If the tour was meant to earn American confidence, the proof of that pudding isn't in the eating.
If the idea was to kill two birds with one stone, it may have happened with a bizarre twist. It was a long and distant trip, which didn't go far.
The writer is Editor, First News and a columnist of The Daily Star.
Email: badrul151@yahoo.com
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