[ALOCHONA] Foreign interference unacceptable

Foreign interference unacceptable

Rashed Khan Menon, president of the left-leaning Workers Party of Bangladesh, a component of the Awami League-led ruling alliance, has rightly pointed out in the parliament that foreign countries, particularly the United States, is interfering in the internal affairs of the country. Menon was referring to the case of removal of Dr Muhammad Yunus from the post of the Grameen Bank's managing director by the government and the US administration's repeated demand that a negotiated settlement be reached between the two parties.

Menon observed that such interference was 'unacceptable.' We cannot agree with him more. While we do not accept the visible governmental efforts to malign Dr Yunus, or any person for that matter, on the basis of yet-to-be proved allegations of financial corruptions, we have no reason to accept the foreigners' continued pressures, direct or indirect, on our elected government to reach a negotiated settlement of a legally controversial issue, pending with the country's highest court. If Dr Yunus has flouted the law of the land to retain his administrative position in the bank, he should be removed from the position for the sake of the rule of law, which promises equal treatment of all citizens by the state. If Dr. Yunus is genuinely considered still indispensable for the Grameen Bank, the government is free to amend the law concerned, increasing the age-limit for the managing directors of all the banks.

However, a truly nationalist government committed not only to the political, economic and cultural interests of the people but also to the national sense of dignity can make sincere efforts to avoid foreign pressures in conducting the affairs of 'nation state.' The ruling Awami League-Jatiya Party coalition, like its BNP-Jamaat predecessor, has hardly displayed its sense of dignity in governing the state on its own. The Wikileaks report showed only the other day that the government's foreign affairs adviser had 'briefed the US administration' about the contents of the agreements signed between the prime ministers of Bangladesh and India which have never been properly disclosed to our people. Besides, the country's ruling class politicians of rival camps have long been seen, to the disgust of the ordinary millions, rushing to the foreign missions in Dhaka to complain against each other and seek their interventions in resolving local political disputes.

It is too much to expect that the country's political class voluntarily seeking foreign interference in the local affairs would now be able to resist interference with the domestic affairs by foreigners. So, who knows, the incumbents may eventually surrender to the US and its Western allies and work out a negotiation and thus make Yunus and his foreign friends have the last laugh. However, Yunus, claiming to be a big champion of nationalist causes, should not have allowed his powerful foreign friends to interfere in the country's internal affairs so nakedly. He should have rather resisted the governmental wrath against him, if there is any, with the active support of the millions of the poor that he claims to be supporting him for years now.

Meanwhile, the democratically oriented sections of our people need to organise themselves politically against the political class vulnerable to foreign pressures at any given time. Tolerating foreign interference, after all, is inconsistent with the people's spirit of the liberation war that they fought 40 years ago.

http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/12555.html

US interference unacceptable: Hanif
http://bdnews24.com/details.php?id=190626&cid=2

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