Editorial
BNP manifesto
Emphasis on functional parliament, institutional reform and safety net welcome
BANGLADESH Nationalist Party chief Khaleda Zia has made public 36-point election manifesto of her party along with the slogan 'Save country, save people' as the central theme.
She has been markedly focused on making parliament effective and functional through taking some pragmatic steps. She suggested that speaker and deputy speaker will have to resign from their party posts after nomination and that the deputy speaker will be nominated from the opposition.
The BNP manifesto further suggests that parliamentary standing committees will be formed by the second session of parliament and chairmen of important committees will be picked from the opposition bench. According to the manifesto, no party or alliance should boycott parliament sessions though they would be able to stage walkouts on specific issues. We believe the idea of parliament members on both sides of the aisle enjoying full access to government funds and facilities will ensure participatory role of all MPs.
BNP remains pledge-bound to form an all-party parliamentary committee to ensure transparency in the Anti-Corruption Commission and the University Grants Commission.
Khaleda Zia has pledged to take effective steps to curb corruption, contain price hike of essentials, improve law and order and fight terrorism. No doubt corruption of despicable proportion has pervaded every stratum of society and maybe if only she had hinted at corruption and malpractice seeping through the four-party alliance government it would have gone down well with the audience.
There is no denying that a great deal has to be done to address the spiraling prices, improve law and order and face the rising spectre of terrorism in the country. These should be at the top of the agenda to end people's sufferings and bring credibility to the government. Her promise to make the judiciary fully independent conforms to people's expectation. However, we remember how the relevant file had gone back and forth from the ministry of law towards the fag end of the immediate past government, with a record number of extensions sought from High Court for compliance from the latter's directives.
It also suggests making arrangement for farm subsidies to ensure food security and taking measures for optimum use of the country's oil and gas resources. We find the ideas of introducing health insurance for the poor, offering unemployment allowance and ensuring job for one youth from each family as extending the reach of the safety-net. Her emphasis on decentralisation of the administration and making changes in the caretaker government system is well taken.
While a few of the ideas on the list can be labeled as new ideas, others appeared as mere echo from the past, reminding listeners of what she had been saying before every election, but not taking steps to fulfill while in power. For example, she talked about scrapping the Special Powers Act, but our experience says that it never happened in the past fifteen years under none of the democratically elected governments.
What intrigues us is the overarching slogan -- 'Save country, save people.' What is not clear to us is who or what the BNP is trying to save the country from? We think the party needs to explain it to the people for it to have any meaning.
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