| HASINA TALKS NO POLITICS IN CANADA, UNCHARACTERISTICALLY Confrontational politics lurking in the horizon? M. Shahidul Islam in Toronto In the 1980s, London became the epicentre of Bangladesh politics. It shifted to New York in the 1990s and made a dash toward Toronto in recent weeks.
A streak of good luck did ensure my presence in all the three locations to witness first hand the tides of history changing and the nation of Bangladesh moving from one political milestone to the other.
On June 29, the journey to the Ellise hall of Toronto's east end was a deceiving one. The venue of an exclusive gathering of party loyalists with Sheikh Hasina was supposed to be at the local Bollywood banquet hall, a familiar place to many of the expatriates who often flock there to interact with Bangladeshi dignitaries coming to Canada from Bangladesh.
Despite the organizers' tight-leaped posture to keep the programme a hermetically concealed one from public eyes, some unwarranted local enthusiasts did flock around the Bollywood site at 5 PM on that breezy summer afternoon. They all, however, felt deceived, as was I.
After having used a bit of 'old trick' to locate the luxurious Ellise hall where the main venue located-and the former prime minister did arrive two hours later to exchange greetings with her party loyalists -- my endeavour to see and hear a 'reformed' Sheikh Hasina succeeded.
The gathering was exclusive, intimate and impeccably designed not to discern the ambiance of a political jamboree, something the former PM is learnt to have promised to the government to refrain from while visiting abroad as an accused on bail/parole.
In keeping with that promise, Sheikh Hasina conducted herself in the most dignified manner - sounding devoid of the characteristically aggressive and polemical utterances that often overtook most of her public speeches of the past.
Sheikh Hasina entered the Ellise hall in the company of ranking Canadian AL leaders and the accompanying guests from Bangladesh. She went to each of the tables to meet everyone personally. Her sister, Sheikh Rehana, and the chief of security, General (retd) Tareq Siddiqui, flanked her during the one-on-one exchanges with the guests, most of who were personally known to her.
As I watched her for over two hours, I discovered a different Sheikh Hasina. Even the golden beaming of elegant chandeliers failed to uplift the lost dazzle in her outlook. She seemed pale, broken and enfeebled.
Power changes people, but imprisonment does much more. This was not the Sheikh Hasina the Bangladeshis are used to seeing and knowing. In an emotion-choked speech that she delivered once the hosts unwillingly concluded their marathon congratulatory orations, she sounded more academic than a fiery zealot that she always had been.
"I was arrested without a warrant and kept in solitary confinement," she told her intimate party loyalists. "But I will not bow down to anyone other than to Allah."
Cataloguing the achievements of her government during 1996-2001, Sheikh Hasina said, "I left the country self-sufficient in food. People are now starving. I left a kg of rice at Taka 10, it now costs Taka 34-40. We produced 4,300 MW of electricity and devised a plan to produce 7,000 MW by 2008. From 40m MT of food shortage from where we took over, we left 26m MT surplus while quitting power. The 1.5 per cent of inflation of my time has now soared to over 10 per cent."
As a remedy to that 'ravage of the nation', Hasina told her party loyalists to unite and work hard to serve the country. "We can not allow the country to be destroyed," she exhorted to the exclusive group of trusted followers who routinely contribute to the party fund and remain loyal to her during all adversities. "We want an election to ensure universal franchise and the one that will be truly transparent and representative of the peoples' desire."
She warned: "Running the country is not a feat, something the people in power now realizes."
Recounting the dreadful memories of captivity, Hasina said, "I told the DIG and the IG of prison to bury me with ordinary people of Azimpur graveyard. I did so out of my desire to be with the ones I always wanted to serve."
Rebutting the toll seeking allegation she was charged with, Hasina said, "I was an elected student leader of my college and studied in Dhaka University. No one has ever blamed me for toll seeking. This case is concocted."
Sources close to her maintain, Sheikh Hasina is in an irrevocable election-bound mood of some sort. Irrespective of what other parties decide with respect to participating in the upozilla and other local government elections first, the AL chief is mentally predisposed to joining all the elections under the current administration. This may be the deal that people murmur about, and, one that gets credence due to the AL's increased tendency to play as a complicit partner to the military-backed government, say observers.
But there are others who think the nation now deserves a deal that would compel the government to hold the parliamentary election first, and leave everything else to the elected parliament. They say time for procrastination is over and the nation is in dire crisis.
People may think anything, but the politics of Bangladesh being what it is, one must wait for the unfolding of events in coming weeks.
As I left the rendezvous at about 9PM when the last rays of a rarely- seen- summer day- sun was fading away, I was overtaken by a number of sordid lessons from the pages of our post-liberation history book.
While Hasina spoke of her intent to join the polls, I knew the BNP had tagged a number of preconditions to joining the ensuing local government elections. I also learnt that night that BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia would leap out of captivity within days and many others may follow suit.
The random deal-making of the above nature deals severe blows to the credibility of the current administration and makes the remnant of the year 2008 as decisive as was the year 1998, exactly two decades ago. Two years before that, the AL had offered legitimacy to General Ershad's military rule by participating in the 1986 election but boycotted by he BNP. While the 1998 elections were boycotted by both the AL and BNP, the mass uprising against the Ershad regime that followed in the penultimate days of 1990 had catapulted the BNP into power.
Analysts say that the time and the context are now different but the mood of the people is anything but.
Part of the reason for that resembling mindset lay in the ongoing economic insecurity that has battered the lives of ordinary people for too long. Besides the ever festering food crisis, a nagging inflation and the lack of employment opportunities, the government is aggressively pursuing a World Bank-prodded agenda to divest the major service sectors-including the DESA and the BTTB-and has re-imposed 34-66 percent price hikes on fuel in a single stroke. Critics are openly saying that this regime is 'anti-people'.
There is little to blame the critics as this is the second increase in fuel price in as many months; since a 21 per cent increase was imposed in April 2007 and, its rebounding effect on the other aspects of the economy may be too much to bear with.
Sheikh Hasina seemed eager to cash on this particular vulnerability of the government and wants to turn the diabolic economic mess into a vote-winning strategy. But her apparent deal-making with the government is not being viewed as a positive vote-earning venture by many observers.
Some say the BNP might snatch a victory by being doggedly opposed to the election schemes of the government, other than the constitutionally prescribed parliamentary one that Khaleda Zia wants to be held first.
A senior BNP leader said, "Khaleda Zia's strength is constitutionalism. She will not deviate an inch from that."
Should that be the case, a troubling time awaits the nation and the politics of confrontation may soon stage a vengeful come back. http://www.weeklyholiday.net/front.html#01 |