A self-deprecating remark

The minister on Monday, it is learnt, told the Japanese and British donors who had assembled to announce a joint funding policy for Bangladesh that the latter would be prepared to listen more to the development partners' exhortations were they to increase their levels of assistance. For he feels that donors advise Bangladesh a lot but provide less assistance.

Saifur Rahman is known for candour and occasional good-humoured raillery, but there is obviously nothing light-hearted about what he has uttered in the present case. In the first place, there is a bit of doublespeak here in that the minister did occasionally berate 'donor dictates' in the past but now he indicates that he wouldn't mind listening to more donor advice if this was preceded by a stepped up inflow of assistance.

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To our mind, a good piece of advice should be welcomed and heeded regardless of who gave it -- a multilateral international agency, a donor country, big or small, the civil society in the country including private sector experts, or the media, for that matter. The quality or the impelling nature of an advice, or indeed, a critique, has nothing to do with money.

How much we wish the minister hadn't made those unprincipled, unconscionable and self-deprecating remarks that couldn't have put a shine on the image of the country.