The wolves behind the bushes
THESE days you will hear quite a few voices crying hoarse (excuse the cliché) about what they think is a threat to national security, and that too symbolised by the Awami League-led grand alliance government. Humour, if that is some kind of humour, is fine but only up to a point. And bitterness? That too is understandable, given that there are people amongst us who have not been happy with the triumph of secular forces at the December 2008 elections.
For these people, the period of the Fakhruddin Ahmed caretaker regime was akin to military rule. And, come to think of it, they honestly believe that it was the army which placed the Awami League back in power. Ask them about the unbridled corruption of the five years of Bangladesh Nationalist Party-Jamaat-e-Islami rule. Ask them about all the robber barons who left the country bleeding from the wounds they inflicted on it. Ask them about the pernicious presence that was Hawa Bhaban. Ask them about the unfinished bridges over dying rivers. They will look the other way. No contrition in them, not a bit of shame in their eyes.
And then there are other points you can raise with them. The on-going parliamentary inquiry into the alleged corruption of the former speaker, deputy speaker and ruling party chief whip is a window to everything that has been going wrong with us. The bigger sadness is these people have other people to defend them.
And now observe the response of the Awami League chief whip to charges that he procured money from parliament in a way he should not have. He has promised to refund the money.
In contrast, the chief whip of the opposition BNP has flatly refused to give up the money he took from the legislature. He took it, says he, through appropriate procedures. And there you have it. And, yes, there is more. The Jamaat-e-Islami, worried about the planned trial of the war criminals of 1971, warns the government to stay away from harassing anyone in the name of the trial.
Expand the thought. A whole phalanx of rightwing politicians and their camp followers have been worried over the probable consequences of a formal annulment of the fifth amendment to the constitution. You will see an entire club of individuals (and they are in the media too) ready to pepper you with dire warnings of a return to one-party government if the fifth amendment goes. Baksal, so goes their argument was bad, but illegitimate government was not!
Secular politics in Bangladesh has regularly been in a state of siege. Doesn't it strike you as curious that it was only through the 1960s and early 1970s, a brief spot in historical time, that secularism served as the underpinning for our nationalism? A journalist, mourning the death of Bangladesh's first military ruler twenty-eight years ago, writes in loaded manner. He would dearly like doors and windows to be thrown open and the muezzin's call to prayer heard. That is provocative writing. It suggests, in the way many others have suggested in pre- and post-1971 Bangladesh, that through the politics of secular democracy we have banished religion from our lives. The sinister is here.
Outrageous hints are being dropped about almost everything around us. Take the BDR tragedy. Take the question of the army. Take national security. Defeat at the general elections has forced the right wing to seek newer paths of embarrassing us all. And we are worried. There are too many wolves behind the bushes. Too many ghostly spirits of past darkness lurk in the fields and by the river.
Not one of these angry men says anything about the scandal that is the ten-truck arms incident. Not one of them has the moral courage to condemn the powerful men behind the August 21, 2004 killings. With each day going by, the dangers to which men in powerful positions exposed this country in the years of BNP-Jamaat rule becomes increasingly glaring.
And yet these men sanctimoniously worried about the state of the nation in a secular dispensation will not speak about it. They will not let us in on their response to the nabbing of Abdur Rauf Daud Merchant. Raise the question of Pakistan's notorious ISI on the prowl across this country with them. Try speaking to them about the religious militancy that sprouted in the times of rightwing government. Whisper to them about the commandeering of our lakes and rivers by men and women of sinister intent. Their silence can be deafening.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are difficult times we inhabit. And yet these are those precious moments within the ambience of which we can reclaim our history and our heritage. These are those brief spots in space in which we can roll back the tragedy which has for ages eaten into our souls and made a havoc of our sensibilities. It is time for strong, purposeful leadership once again. Let the mountebanks around us be marginalised -- and stay that way.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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