Celebrating achievement where failure outweighs success

It has taken five long years for the prime minister to realise that power (electricity) is the prime mover of the national economy. Between the period we had Kansat, Shonir Akhra, and other mass upsurges.

Such belated realisation on the part of the chief executive of government is taken by her political adversaries and general members of the public as an indirect admission of her pitiable failure.

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Yet the PM makes a funny overture alluding to the somehow unusual incidence of power failure in New York, USA recently to tell her listeners in public meetings that such power failure also 'takes place even in rich western countries'. She doesn't tell, however, that it is not a regular feature there as ours here. In fact, that was a very temporary incident attributed to sudden mechanical failure and overloads at some points. It was just not allowed to escalate. Politicians here are used to making such pre-election promises which cannot be of any positive consequence.

At least, BNP stalwart Col (retd) Oli Ahmed didn't believe that the party leadership would be able to fulfil its promise, inter alia, on power generation. He too observed that this had been on the election manifesto in 2001 but nothing tangible has been done in this sector over the past five years. He ascribes this major failure to the colossal state of corruption among the ministers and others. Without specific mention of any name he asserts that many of them had nothing to thrive upon before inducted in the cabinet. Now he sees them with swollen necks sustaining their livelihood on mostly unearned income. Col (rtd) Oli set a date line by which the Prime Minister would have to remove the corrupt ministers from her cabinet, else, he would be no longer with BNP.

The situation in the power sector has rapidly turned out to be terrible. Mass upsurge at Shonir Ankhra is again in the offing. Other areas/wards of the city including the old part are also raging in frenzy; rampage of motor vehicles, road side shops and establishments have already been there. Battle in the streets with the law enforcing agencies has been mounting.

There were as many as 32 broad items comprising over one hundred specific areas on the agenda of 4-party alliance incorporated in their election manifesto of 2001. BNP promised to augment power generation capacity and improvement of supplies. In practice, however, the majority population of the country is now compelled to pass most of their nights in dark, and their days are having terribly frequent snaps in power supply. Even in the holy month of Ramadan the situation remained almost unchanged. In spite of the drum-beating to celebrate completion of its 5-year term, the successes achieved so far are far outweighed by the magnitude of the failures.

Unbridled escalation of prices of essential commodities, glaring failure to solve problems related to power generation, failure to contain corruption now reaching all time high, more importantly, failure to separate the Judiciary from the Executive due to indecision, inability to form the much desired Human Rights Commission etc. can be cited as examples to discredit the present government. Unfortunately for every citizen of the country these and many more important areas couldn't receive the authorities' time and honest attention over the past five years. On the contrary, the men and women responsible for taking care of the stipulated areas devoted their time and energy on state rhetorics against the Opposition in public meetings pursuing concurrently their respective designs to be richer overnight as Col (rtd) Oli Ahmed pointed out.

Now, about the dialogue on the reform proposals of AL-led 14-party alliance. This resembles a mockery.

Time and again Mr Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan and Mr Abdul Jalil sat in the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban. Their press briefings were mere repetition of their previous parley. Both confirmed, without being specific, that there had been some progress on quite a good number of items.

But, ultimately they failed to reach any agreement. How can they if they can't budge a bit from their respective stances. And it was a foregone conclusion. But the point is, whom they befooled and why?

Kazi Alauddin Ahmed is a management consultant.