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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

[ALOCHONA] Don’t blame politicians, be a politician/ An Article in the New Age

You may find interest in this, in case you would like to think out of the box..........
 
Thanks and best regards.
 
-Reshad
 
 
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IN BANGLADESH there are some very common rules – if you speak against Islam you are 'secular' (or 'religiously neutral'); if you blindly speak against the ruling party you are 'politically neutral'; and if you speak against any and everything you are an 'intellectual'. And the most recent trend is to speak against politicians.
   
 
During the recent anarchy in Bangladesh most of us have been blaming our politicians for all our problems. But have we ever taken a deep breath and given this a second thought before doing so?
 
I happened to be involved with the students' union of a university hall in Bangladesh in the late-1990s. After a lot of effort and hard work I was able to organise our first event which was later appreciated a lot. But as soon as I came down from the stage, a good friend of mine asked me, 'How much did you make?' I swore to myself that I would do as much corruption as possible in the next programme. Thank God I didn't get a chance since I moved to the United States soon after that. This makes me think – we are always cursing the politicians, yet have we ever appreciated them for their good deeds? What incentive do they have to do a good job?
 
Many of you may remember the April 1, 1999 incident at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology when the whole university observed the agitation by students including attacks on academic buildings. We, as members of the Engineering University Central Students' Union, informed the authorities well ahead of time about possible student agitation. They didn't listen to us and when finally the violence occurred, all the students were blamed. The authorities never asked for our advice before any incident, but whenever anything happened student politics was the first thing to be blamed.
 
Politicians are the easy scapegoats now and they are always blamed. Yet how many bureaucrats have we seen going to jail? Governments change and people change, but bureaucracy never changes. Ex-ministers go to jail but nobody can touch the 'innocent' bureaucrats. Does it mean that they are all angels coming down from the heaven? How many army officers have been tried for corruption in the past few months?
 
Of course, most of top positions of our political parties are occupied by corrupt people. But why? This is because all the so-called good people maintain a safe distance from politics and the others come in to fill the vacuum.
 
If we analyse the history of Bangladesh (and East Pakistan) for the past fifty years we find that anarchy was created before every military rule. Turmoil in the parliament was used in 1956 to justify martial law which eventually brought Ayub Khan into power and General Ershad used 'corruption of the Justice Sattar-led government' to justify military rule, which eventually brought a government which was a million times more corrupt than the previous one.
 
We have always seen that before snatching power all military rulers declare 'jihad' against politicians and try to ruin their character through the use of their puppet media. Think about General Ershad – he at first put a number of politicians in jail for corruption, and later on released them and eventually recruited them in his cabinet (one of them became his vice-president).
 
The goal of this article is not to engage in this mindless blame game. What I want to say is that blaming politicians is not going to solve anything; on the other hand we should reveal the characters of the blamers. The same person who blames politicians also goes to the politician friend to get a permit or to get a job.
 
Let's look at the other side of the story – why is the army taking over from the politicians again and again? The answer is very simple – politicians failed to resist the army's penetration. Why? Because we don't have enough qualified and competent leaders. Can anyone in this country confidently say that we have enough skilled labour in any profession? Do the lawyers have integrity? Do all the doctors know well what they are doing? Are all the students attentive? Are all the teachers honest? Of course, the answer is no for each of those questions. Then why blame only politicians and politics for our problems?
 
The root cause is in our culture/ethnicity. We used to be farmers a couple of generations back. There was no infrastructure for modern education; the little opportunity for education that was available was only religious education. So for centuries education system was dominated by half-literate mullahs (excluding some exceptions). We got our first university (Dhaka University) in 1921. Whereas in the United States they have had universities in the 16th century and even before that in many developed countries in Europe. When the British left there were very few skilled and well-educated people in the former East Pakistan to run the country. As a result, we have seen mismanagement everywhere.
 
Talking about politics – most of our 'good' politicians either died or were killed or demoralised. Even more dangerously, the so-called 'good' and 'well-educated' people were afraid to come forward and step up. As a result, all the 'bad' people filled in the vacuum and we are seeing the result with our own eyes now.
 
So where is the solution? We have given blood in 1952, 1966, 1969, 1971, 1975, 1982 and 1990. Why do we still need to give blood? Because every time power ended up with non-qualified people who did not have a long-term plan to develop our country. As a result, people changed but the system didn't. The same thing happened over and over again.
 
I can't blame today's politicians; we only know their bad side but do we really know how they can motivate the general masses? Do we know how they help people during their hardship (i.e. natural disasters)? That is why they have their followers who are ready to die for them. Can we break this tradition overnight?
 
So where is the solution? The only solution that I see to get qualified people into politics. I am not talking like our ex-dictators who declared war against corruption, suddenly brought the elite into politics and eventually opened the door to sky-high corruption. What I want to say is good people need to mix with our general people and emerge as leaders from there. Of course, this will take time and patience. What do we do in the mean time? We need the military-backed interim government to hand over power to an elected government at the soonest. If anything other than this happens our country will be back to square one again.
 
I appreciate all the good deeds that this government is doing including making some good laws that would keep away corrupt people from politics, putting them in jail and so on. But at the same time, we have learnt from history that continuing with this type of government for an indefinite period will bring disaster to the country. So let's all work towards free and fair elections as well as an honourable exit for this government as soon as possible.
 
Saleheen Monowar Reshad writes from Houston, Texas

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