Khaleda's speech

The Bangladesh that she tried to depict in her predominantly self-congratulatory speech is not the one that we are living in today. The statistics on development activities that she presented are selective at best. Of course, Bangladesh has made notable progress in some key sectors. While the government may claim the credit for better performance of the industries and export sectors, the progress made by the social sectors has been a decades-old attainment, largely made possible by the contribution of the NGOs -- the real catalyst for social change. Didn't they deserve a word of appreciation from the outgoing prime minister?

The prime minister failed to address the real concern of people who are greatly worried about the future of the country itself. She decided to sidetrack the burning issues. Her speech only made a passing reference to the crisis that now threatens to paralyse the whole country. She failed to explain why people are burdened by an unbearable price hike and a chronic shortage of electricity. Finally, her skirting of the issue of corruption left the biggest question in the public mind unanswered: why is Bangladesh perceived as the most corrupt country in the world? It was not enough to say that her government tried to contain this problem.

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The prime minister could not overcome the obsession that made her take a consistently cynical view of her political rivals over the last five years. And there was the same attempt to compare her government's achievements with that of the previous AL government. Such a comparison after running the country for five years is pathetic, to say the least.

We are forced to conclude that the prime minister created her own make-believe world full of sycophants and spin doctors and viewed everything from that position. Even if the speech is to be treated as election propaganda, it sounded far from convincing.