Editorial
This Victory Day is especially auspicious
Let's live up to its true significance
IT is a time to celebrate and to remember. Three million Bengalis made the supreme sacrifice in order for all of us to live and thrive in freedom. Today we recall the various odds we overcame in 1971 -- the opposition of the Nixon administration, the non-cooperative role of the Chinese government, the hostility of most Middle Eastern nations -- as we struggled to wrest freedom from the genocidal Pakistan establishment. We recall too the help and sympathy of our friends, especially India and the Soviet Union, and others across the world as we waged war against the occupation forces. We recall the decisive leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the wisdom and guidance of the Mujibnagar government in our determined war for liberation.
Victory Day comes as an especially auspicious occasion this year. It is so because later this month the nation will go to the polls to elect a new, democratic government for itself. It is our belief that through the elections of December 29, the people of Bangladesh will see an upholding of the spirit of the War of Liberation. That spirit is essentially one of a striving towards establishing an egalitarian society for all.
Thirty seven years after that decisive victory against the enemy, it is time for some self-assessment on our part. The truth is out there. We have stumbled and fallen and raised ourselves again and again all these years, for the spirit which led us into the War of Liberation has been an ethos we have never let go of. Yes, we have had our many bouts with political instability, with repeated changes in the political system, with the various instances of military and quasi-military rule. And for all our long struggle for democracy, we have observed since 1991 a gradual collapse of democratic government into a state of the dysfunctional. Obviously, therefore, it now becomes our responsibility, moral as well as political, to ensure for ourselves the kind of governance that will truly reflect the spirit of the 1971 war. It may be an irony that nearly four decades after liberation, we still must emphasise the old spirit, the need to hold the trials of war criminals and the great necessity of bringing to justice those responsible for the assassination of Bangabandhu and the four national leaders in 1975. Such issues ought to have been resolved long ago. It is time to remind ourselves that unless these nagging issues are resolved to satisfaction, our sense of triumph will remain incomplete.
It is, therefore, in the fitness of things that we today resolve to implement the dreams of the martyrs. Those dreams were based on the premise of our giving to ourselves a stable democratic system of governance, an economic order that would cater to the welfare of all citizens and a social system that would ensure the rights and dignity of every individual. It is a promise that we mean to keep, that our political leaders should strive strenuously to realise in our national interest. Let the general elections of December 29 be a first, pivotal step in that direction.
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