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Thursday, September 6, 2012

[chottala.com] AL govt. making country ungovernable

AL govt. making country ungovernable

Ataus Samad

The Awami League government is being currently roasted not merely in
its own juice but also in its own frying pan. That too on its own
stove. For falling into such a sorry state the ruling party has to
blame its leaders, who include the Prime Minister, her officially
appointed advisers and members of the cabinet. All their tall talk
about clean government, transparency at high level and in parliament,
personal security for every citizen, justice for all, progress in
education, creating large-scale employment opportunity, sustainable
economic development and bringing galloping inflation under control in
order to make cost of living affordable have been proved hollow by
events and hard facts.

A number of the members of the charmed circle of rulers have been
named in corruption inquiries. The Anti-corruption Commission has been
obliged to ask a few of them to answer questions. Key ministers have
been admitting that not all wheels of transport and industry are
turning. Seventy six per cent of the total expenditure on power
production is being eaten up by rental and quick rental electric
supply stations although these supply only 15 per cent of the
electricity generated in the country. This has shown that claims of
magical power production by an adviser close to the prime minister are
wrong and totally misleading state-run universities are beset with
internal strife. The calm appearance of the education minister can no
longer put under wraps the storms in the education sector.

There is serious infighting in the government and the ruling party.But
stalwarts in Sheikh Hasina's government and she herself keep claiming
that joy, cheer and democracy shine down on every household and
everybody in Bangladesh.

At the same time these stalwarts keep brazenly using this and that
dirty trick to deflect serious charges directed at them. One of these
unholy manoeuvres is to snub those who urge reform and caution.
Another is to attempt to browbeat the print and broadcasting media
into silence. But the worst is to encourage wrong-doers and protect
them from law, especially kith and kin. Indeed the situation has come
to a pass in which governance has become extinct. Any future
government is going to find it extremely hard to restore honest
management of the government.

There are examples galore of the overwhelming rot. One case of
monumental corruption is the fleecing of the state-owned Sonali Bank
of more than Tk.3,600 crore by a business group named Hallmark and
several other little known entities. The bank authorities dragged
their feet for months about investigating into official reports on the
scams until the country's central bank could not tolerate these any
longer and reports began appearing in the press. Now the government is
saying that it is likely to be able to recover a big chunk of the
money but claims that this is being hampered by "too much shouting" in
the press. Indeed finance minister Abul Mal Abdul Muhith himself has
said so. He has also claimed that the amount given as illegal loan is
"nothing significant" compared to the total bank loans given annually.
For this he has been criticised by ruling party's members of
parliament Sheikh Seli9m and Tofael Ahmed. Indeed, Selim stopped short
of calling the finance minister senile. Both treasury bench members
cautioned that if the offenders were not punished then the government
will have to take the blame for the scandal. It may be mentioned here
that. this is the biggest bank scandal in Bangladesh.

Even the new managing direct of Sonali Bank has said that what had
happened was shameful. Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, acting secretary
general of the main opposition party BNP has asked the finance
minister to step down immediately. Meanwhile, it has become known that
similar fraudulent activities have occurred at some of the other
state-owned banks too. This caused more demands for impartial enquiry
into the state-owned banks under the supervision of impartial bank
managements. The government had appointed three years ago chairmen and
members of the boards of these banks mainly on the ground that those
persons were close to Awami League. Now, instead of heeding calls for
change the government has reappointed the chairmen for another two
years. Only the term of Sonali Bank chairman has not been specified.

These reappointments are being conisdered to be a slap on the face of
the honest public. Against this backdrop it is being sorely recalled
by all that although the share market scam of 2010 was the worst in
the history of Bangladesh and the government has received an enquiry
report from the Khaled Ibrahim committee appointed by the government
itself so far none has been prosecuted. On the other hand the Finance
Minister had said that those mentioned in the enquiry report as
manipulators of the stock market were too big people to be touched.

One such big person is alleged to be on the prowl to capture the
FBCCI. On the heel of the bank-swindling scandal common citizens
watched with shock that the police investigators submitted a report to
a court to the effect that they could not identify those policemen who
had mercilessly beaten up and seriously wounded the Chief Whip of the
Opposition in parliament Zainul Abedin Faruk on July 6, 2011, during a
general strike called by the BNP. The court then dismissed the case on
the ground that no accused could be found. Police has behaved
similarly in the case of the college student Limon who was shot in the
leg by RAB members during a raid to catch a criminal. The criminal ,
however, was said to have escaped the dragnet. Limon accused the RAB
members of willfully shooting him. The police enquiry found the
accused to be not guilty. In a case of alleged attempt to rape a woman
in a police camp inside the Dhaka court compound yet another police
inquiry has found policemen to be not guilty.

Members of the ruling Awami League and of its various associate
organisations are hardly ever touched by the police in any act of
their crime. In any case of clash between rival groups the police
invariably arrests those not belonging to Awami League and refuses
even to record cases against Awami Leaguers. In certain cases police
have put top opposition leaders like M.K.Anwar and Mirza Fakhrul Islam
Alamgir, on trial in special courts although the latter were nowhere
near the places of occurrence. Daily Amar Desh editor Mahmudur Rahman
has been charged by police for inciting lawyers although he was then
in custody of the police themselves. He was actually in a prison van
parked inside a ring of policemen at the Dhaka court compound.

From the very start the present government had stuffed the judiciary
with its own men and women.Awami League got a dividend by doing so as
opposition members have since then found it difficult to get legal
relief. But now several judges of the High Court Division on the one
side and the Speaker of the parliament, Abdul Hamid, Advocate, as well
as front bench members of the ruling party are at loggerheads. Each
side is claiming that the other does not have a jurisdiction to annul
its decision and action. Treasury bench members now want to reclaim
their power to impeach Supreme Court judges. There is a lot on unease
about this unwelcome tussle because this kind of face-off can cause
destabilisation of the democratic process in the country.

To crown all such acts of government party-spawned corruption, crime,
indiscipline, favouritism, inefficiency has come the Global
Competitiveness Report 2012-13 in which Bangladesh has gone down ten
positions from its already low level last year. This report is
prepared by the World Economic Forum. This report has cited a broken
down infra-structure, high rate of inflation, government's failure to
contain inflation, bribery, weak judiciary and lack of faith on
politicians as the main reasons for the downslide of Bangladesh. The
report reflects the opinion of businessmen.

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September 07, 2012


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[chottala.com] Delhi worries on Hasina’s popularity slide

Delhi worries on Hasina's popularity slide

The Times of India published an article entitled 'India's worries
could mount with Khaleda Zia'a expected return to power in Bangladesh'
on August 29, 2012. It said that the India intelligence agencies were
very worried at the rapid decline in popularity of the incumbent Awami
League government and the expected return to power by BNP.

The article mentions: "New Delhi has got unprecedented cooperation
from the Hasina regime in busting the havens of Indian insurgent
groups in her country as well as in the investigation of terror
incidents with Bangladeshi linkages. However, as the popularity of the
Awami League regime under Hasina dips, ceding ground to rival BNP, the
agencies fear that the gains of the last few years may be reversed if
Khaleda regains power."

It added: "Obviously, the Indian security establishment is keen to
arrest the slide in Awami League's popularity. Though there is little
it can do to reverse the incumbency disadvantage, a positive
development on the Teesta water-sharing pact, financial assistance for
the Padma Bridge project and exchange of enclaves may go a long way in
correcting the negative perception in Bangladesh that Hasina has not
managed any major concessions from India. However, these will be
possible only after UPA's troublesome ally, the Trinamool Congress, is
convinced to drop its reservations on Teesta and the enclaves…..Even
as efforts will intensify over the next year to recover lost ground
for Hasina, senior intelligence officials here claimed that Khaleda's
BNP alliance, saddled by corruption cases and expected conviction of
its leaders by war crimes tribunals, could see a reversal in its
growing popular perception closer to the polls, expected sometime in
February 2014."

Uncharitable, obscene
This article is followed by more than four hundred comments from the
readers, an overwhelming majority of whom are Indians. The language
used by the Indians to demean the Bangladeshis is mostly uncharitable
and obscene. It is obvious that most of them think that Bangladesh is
still a 'basket case' and is dependent on Indian charity for its
survival. The poor Indians seem to be oblivious of the fact that
Bangladesh has surpassed India in almost all social and economic
indices and in fact this year has left India behind in GDP growth
rate. Industrial growth in India is plummeting while it is fast rising
in Bangladesh.

Indians know nothing about the tremendous progress Bangladesh has made
in the recent years. They treat Bangladesh as a poor cousin of Eastern
India which in turn is treated as a poor cousin of Western India.
While India as a whole is communal, Eastern India is even more
communal. It is common in this region for those who are considered to
be of low cast to be submissive to the upper class Brahmins to be
punished or even be killed. Thus like the lower caste Hindus,
Bangladeshis have no business to be prosperous or successful and this
may give rise to the anger and envy they feel towards Bangladesh.

India will most definitely try their best to hold on to their assets
in Bangladesh by influencing the public opinion whichever way they
can. Ruthless persecution of the opposition parties seems to be high
on their "to do" list. But this is unlikely to deliver the desired
result as people tend to forget that what happened more than five
years ago and are more likely to be influenced by the government's
inaction on a number of corruption and law and order issues that is
plaguing the country today.

The only option left for India is to impress upon the western
countries to allow the holding of the next general elections under the
present Awami League government. This is the only way that Awami
League can hold on to power. On the other hand, losing the next
elections is not an option for this party. The Awami League is exactly
in the same boat as the Caretaker Government of Fakhruddin and
Moinuddin, a BNP victory in the 2014 General Elections will be very
unhealthy for all the beneficiaries of the current government, exactly
as a BNP victory in 2008 would have been to the last Caretaker
Government. A defeat in the next elections is not an option for the
Awami League and with its growing isolation, it will have to be more
dependent on Indian support.

India's NE strategy
India on the other hand has not been able to extract the desired
tangible advantages that it wanted of Bangladesh. The Indian
intelligence report clearly exposes their need for Bangladesh support
to hold on to their remote north eastern territories. It is ridiculous
to claim that insurgents there need Bangladesh support to fight Indian
control there. If the Maoists in central India can effectively fight
the powerful Indian army without any external support, it is most
unlikely that the much better organised, far more experienced
insurgents fighting in some of the most inhospitable terrains in Asia
will need the support of Bangladesh.

On the contrary, the Indian army, whose recruits are mostly from the
plains, do need easy access to these hilly battlegrounds which only
Bangladesh can provide. India needs transit through Bangladesh for
quick, and more importantly, cheap transport of weapons and personnel
to their remote north-eastern battlegrounds.
Certain developments in India have not been advantageous for the Awami
League. The departure of "Kakababu" Pranab Mukherjee from the Indian
central cabinet and the rise to power by Mamata Banerjee has left
Awami League with no powerful friends in New Delhi. This means that
India will not be able to oblige Bangladesh with anything that would
be seen as a friendly gesture, i.e., Teesta Barrage waters or the
exchange of enclaves. This would mean that India would be pressing for
long term concessions from the Awami League without giving anything in
return. The way things are in the country now, the Awami League may
have to do just that if it wishes to stay in power.

http://www.weeklyholiday.net/Homepage/Pages/UserHome.aspx
September 07, 2012


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* Disclaimer: Any posting to the CHOTTALA are the opinion of the author. Authors of the messages to the CHOTTALA are responsible for the accuracy of their information and the conformance of their material with applicable copyright and other laws. Many people will read your post, and it will be archived for a very long time. The act of posting to the CHOTTALA indicates the subscriber's agreement to accept the adjudications of the moderator]
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