Too vulgar to print

We are still withholding the exact words he used out of ethical sensibilities but we feel constrained to share our outrage at the most crude and obscene comments spewed out by Salauddin Quader Chowdhury against two Awami League leaders. About Suranjit the obscenity was in the implication of an insinuation against a religion; and on the opposition leader the lewd trash was in the words themselves. This is thoroughly reprehensible.

The remarks were in such low taste that they create instant revulsion, and for a public person to have uttered them in the full press glare was abjectly contemptible. It was repugnant to our culture and uncivil even by the worst standards of human behaviour.

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That Salauddin Quader Chowdhury could say such things speaks volumes about the quality of his candidacy for the top slot of the OIC secretary-generalship, and the reservations his nomination had generated in the first place would seem justified by hindsight.

The way he has looked at his defeat in the OIC race goes down as a diplomatic blunder featured by fretful rancour that is totally disrespectful of the electoral process resorted to for the first time, otherwise hypocritically dubbed by him as a triumph of democracy. He has termed his defeat a victory of the pro-Israeli plank in the OIC. By one fell stroke of irresponsible remarks, he has staked the country's image negatively, no less perhaps than what his defeat has done. By ascribing his defeat to 'pro-Israeli lobbying' he has not certainly enhanced our goodwill with Turkey, the countries supporting Istanbul's choice, and the OIC as a whole that embraced the process of election. The government will be well-advised to expressly distance itself from Salauddin Quader's remarks about Turkey's victory.

Given his post-poll undiplomatic utterances and the level of vulgarity unleashed on personages at home, one wonders where lies the critical threshold for our Prime Minister's tolerance with such behaviour to get it rectified. It is time she took note of it and acted in an affirmative fashion.