Editorial
Annulling lease on Khaleda Zia's residence
It will likely make politics volatile
The government's sudden action in cancelling the lease on Begum Khaleda Zia's cantonment residence took us by surprise as it did everyone else. Coming only a few days after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina appealed to the Leader of the Opposition, in the Jatiyo Sangsad, to vacate her home, which was gifted by the Sattar government in 1981, the move was truly precipitate. And it was because the authorities do not appear to have waited for a response from Begum Zia to the appeal. Are we now to believe that the decision to have the former prime minister evicted from her house had already been taken and the appeal to her actually amounted to little? Even if the government had legal rights to take such action, there are standard procedures that need to be employed in handling such situations. The most basic one is for the government, through the appropriate department (in this case the cantonment board), to have served notice upon Begum Zia and given her time to respond. Had there been no response, the authorities could have gone ahead with appropriate action, including the one it has taken now.
The government has been stating that Begum Zia and her family have been violating the provisions of the lease agreement reached in the early 1980s. If so, they should have been apprised, in proper fashion, of the specific violations of rules that they have allegedly committed. If Begum Zia has been carrying on politics from her residence, which is in a sensitive area as the cantonment, and if her activities have been posing a threat to the security of the cantonment, she ought to have been apprised of such details formally. Clearly, however, no such intimation was made to her. The fact that the Leader of the Opposition, like every other citizen of Bangladesh, is entitled to due process, has conveniently been overlooked. In this context, the circumstances in which the residence was allotted to Begum Zia are to be recalled. They were not exactly defensible circumstances. Neither is the step now being taken to get it back from her. In our view, both the moves were made on dubious premises. One may note that this newspaper had appealed to Begum Zia after she served her first term as PM to vacate the house, and return it to the State, now that her two sons were adults and she herself was no more a helpless widow needing to live on state's dole. That appeal was ignored.
While on the subject, we must ask if the cabinet has nothing more serious than spending time on whether the Leader of the Opposition can or cannot stay in the house that has to all intents and purposes been hers for twenty-eight years. Do the Prime Minister and her colleagues honestly think that it is an issue before which all other issues -- national security, the economy, politics -- dwindle in significance? Judging by the way this issue has been handled, we unfortunately cannot but conclude that it was guided by narrow political considerations laced with feelings of the personal. Legalities notwithstanding, the move points to the malafide intentions of those behind it. It denigrates the interests of the country and harms its image. It definitely belies the Prime Minister's promise of a change in our political culture.
Let this practice of giving away state property come to an end. And let it be a lesson for everyone that such favours in the end cause much humiliation for those who hold on to them. We fear that the latest action can only exacerbate our already volatile politics.
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