Ah,fear. That old ally of those in power bent on the subjugation of those not. A word, nay an emotion increasingly relevant to the situation back home in the wake of Sheikh Hasina’s arrest and what it tells us about the time we are living in. Not her arrest itself, but rather the conditions surrounding it. There may well be valid grounds for putting together a case against her. As I believe there would be against almost anyone who has ever transacted in our corrupt system for any significant period of time. Maybe she deserves to be in jail for those. Nobody is, after all, above the law as the generals keep reminding us and being a former Prime Minister or the daughter of Bangabandhu should certainly be no guarantor of privelege in this regard. Maybe we are better off without her. And even better off with Khaleda Zia in the cell next to her. These are all more or less given. But the significance of this arrest lies more in the circumstances surrounding it. The devil, as they say, is in the detail.

The first question that springs to my mind is why now when she has started speaking up again? This case has been filed for quite a while now, from before the whole farce over allowing her or not allowing her to board a British Airways flight from Heathrow back home took place in April. If it is really the law that is being done justice through her arrest, why wait until the woman reverted to her outspoken character once more after a period of relative calm? If someone has committed a crime, justice is not waiting till she starts exhibiting criminal tendencies once more to take her to task. Rather, justice is a process that is almost always best expedited. In Hasina’s case, regardless of the merits or demerits of the case, that has clearly not happened. What purpose does the path that has been followed serve? Only one, as far as I can see, and that is not to show nobody is above the law, but that nobody is above the one at whose behest the law is enforced. Dare to do, or speak against him, and you shall be granted your long-overdue date with the law. I expected it in a sense. Hasina has never been the type able to take advantage of a situation where she is better off with her mouth shut. Unlike Jamaat, whose ‘leaders in prison’ count is exactly the number of words they have uttered against the SOE government. Nought.

And lest we forget, it happened more-or-less on the same day Abdul Jalil moved a step closer to buying his freedom by being moved to hospital, not long after ratting out his former leader in a statement bearing the stamp of coercion so large you would believe it is no less a man than Keyser Soze behind this whole palaver. All the arrests and warrants issued in the first six months, we would like to have believed they were all aimed at dismantling a polity gone bad. Now increasingly, it begins to resemble an operation aimed at dismantling opposition. It is here that I am afraid the generals are asking for more than their due.

As it is, they did not have power vested upon them by the will of the people. But for lack of better guardians, we put our faith in their vigilance. The unspoken, and unwritten mandate we granted them was to guide us towards a better democratic future. Not through inculcating a Bushesque culture of fear where those who are not with us are against us, but through meaningful reforms that embrace the participation of as wide a section of society as possible. By having recourse to a freehold over the law and its enforcement, the current administration already has an advantage over the ones which preceded it. By seeking a free run to the finish bereft of any opposition, they are asking for a significantly easier bite at the cherry than those they replaced, while also raising questions over whether we the public and they envision the same ends. They must prove they are worthy of the task by fulfilling their mission through negotiation of obstacles, not the arbitrary use of power to subdue them. That is not much different from what reigned previously.

Above all, to retain our good faith, they must refrain from the politics of fear. Because that is the point at which the freedoms fought for in ‘71 start becoming compromised. And as bad as things were for those fifteen years up until January, given the choice between a people cowering in fear and a people corrupted but standing, I know which one I would prefer to live amongst any day of the week.