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Date: Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:49 AM
Subject: RE: A wake up call for govt
To: Isha Khan <bdmailer@gmail.com>
This govt was a creation of Manmohan-Bush and it has remained tied to the strings of Delhi. Now, as for Delhi at this point of time, the govt in Delhi seems to be grappling with dire consequences of reckless and record-breaking corruption. Any of its financial reputation is now ripped at the seams. Manmohan's govt has lost all its credibility, both at home and abroad!
In a situation like this, how can any sane person in Bangladesh hand over the control of its territory to Delhi in the name of offering more than 16 corridor routes for India's military and trade purposes? Wouldn't it be stabbing our motherland in the back??
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:56:49 +0600
Subject: A wake up call for govt
From: bdmailer@gmail.com
To:
A wake up call for govt
Syed Badrul Ahsan
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina leads an embattled government at this point of time.
You do not need much wisdom to suggest that it is not a very enviable condition. But you do wonder if the prime minister might not be regretting taking some people into her cabinet who have not only turned out to be incompetent but also an embarrassment for her and for the country.
Or you could look at this whole image of chaos in a different way. Has the prime minister been providing the kind of enlightened leadership people expected her to when they so cheerfully returned her party to power in the 2008 general elections? She has never gone for a cabinet reshuffle; she has often stepped in to save ministers who should have ruthlessly been shown the door.
Briefly, she has been presiding over an administration which today faces a mid-term crisis because it is an administration which increasingly looks complacent, which believes it is doing all the good things and which therefore is certain that the rest of the country is wrong in its opinion of it. That's a pity.
The chief engineer of the Roads and Highways Division has resigned. That is good news, proof again that public pressure is a force the vulnerable cannot truly withstand. But why did the minister for communications stay on? Under his watch, roads in the country have been disappearing or degenerating, to a point where you are reminded of all those craters pockmarking the surface of the moon. His own party lawmakers pounce on him in parliament. And yet he smiles all the onslaught off, does not dream of resigning.
The prime minister does not see the damage his presence in government causes the country. Added to this is the dismal defence the shipping minister comes up with over his recommendations for 24,000 licences to new drivers. These drivers do not need literacy, he says, but mere knowledge of traffic signs and signals. And he also suggested that no written tests come in the way of those 24,000 licences.
So, here you have a most bizarre situation. The communications minister will not make our roads vehicle-worthy (because he says he has no funds) and the shipping minister would have 24,000 drivers hit those roads without a required written test. Calculated danger is ready to be unleashed on our roads, thanks to ministerial "'wisdom".
On a different note, the commerce minister now informs the country that his suggestion about eating less was taken out of context by the media. It is an old habit, this attempt at a battering of the media every time a functionary of the state is caught saying or doing the most embarrassing things in public. You ask if the prime minister has pulled him up over his comments or if she has given any thought to replacing him.
And while you do, there is the veteran Tofail Ahmed to remind you of the nosedive the power sector has been taking. People do not even have enough time to have their mobile phones recharged because of the frequency of power cuts. The ministry of power comes forth with all the old, stilted explanations for the malady. Your sense of disbelief lingers.
Elections are difficult to win. And they are easy to lose. With half the term of her government gone, the prime minister should not go on believing that the same people who put her party back in office in 2008 will repeat the exercise the next time round.
In this country, a landslide in the polls has historically and quickly been succeeded by a growing and overwhelming disillusionment over governmental performance or the lack of it, followed by another landslide for another party and yet another period of disillusionment.
It is always the people, those instrumental in creating those huge majorities, who keep losing. They lose in the market, where exorbitant prices and dishonest traders propped up by shady syndicates humiliate them day after day. They lose on the streets, where criminal gangs brandish guns at and fear into them; where callous drivers are happy to mutate into agents of sudden death for the unsuspecting and the innocent. They lose when their taps do not give them water, when the flame on their gas burners grows dim, when the lights go out and swiftly transport them into darkness reminiscent of the medieval, with little way of reaching out to the world beyond their homes.
It is a bleak political landscape we plod through. When ministers place the blame for the miserable condition of roads on past administrations, the bleakness only gets starker. Why must public figures presiding over the present make a scapegoat of the past?
Is the prime minister listening? She will want to win the next election, which presupposes winning back the country before polling day. To win the country, she must lose some badly performing ministers and ministers of state. A leaner, more efficient, vibrant government with competent ministers at the helm is what she and the country needs.
We rest our case.
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=199667
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