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Since we’ve had a lot of talk about cartoons in this blog recently, I present one that made me laugh out loud today. Sharier, the famed Daily Star cartoonist, always delivers. Brilliant! I am interested to hear readers’ take on the “war of liberation” vs. “civil war” debate. From a cut and dry academic perspective, all wars of independence are actually also civil wars since they involve secession from an existing sovereign state or colonial state. But obviously the 1971 war was fought for the independence of Bangladesh (interestingly enough it can also be correctly characterized as falling into the category of an international war given the India-Pakistan dimension). Ultimately, the academic point is moot in this case because the characterization as “civil war” is generally assumed to be politically motivated, meant to trivialize the independence movement.
The Star mentions “Witness to Surrender” by Siddiq Salik as a good source concerning Jamaat’s true allegiances. I would be interested in learning about some other good historical sources on the collaboration of Jamaat and other political groups with the Pakistani army. That reminds me, I need to visit the liberation war museum. They are bound to have some documentation on this.
Found this song by Billie Holiday that I hadn’t heard in a while. Powerful, haunting stuff. Watch it here.
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Oh, the evil that men do!
Does Pakistan provide clues to the future of Bangladesh? On the surface the similarities are striking: dysfunctional democracy, corrupt politicians locked in an unending feud, general arises vowing to clean up, minus two plan successful, general ascends to power buoyed by popular discontent with the status quo, he gains guarded kudos from the international community. Now fast forward eight years: general’s popular support wanes, corruption allegations and army entrenchment grows, failures in governance looming all around, bideshis are unhappy with the results, popular demand for democracy is a rising threat. Then comes the lady to the rescue, bearing blessings from abroad, carrying the standard of democracy, and paving the way for the general to become president and for a king’s party to thrive. Yet, she is tainted, having made a pact that wipes away all questions about her past sins. She is now seen by many to be providing him a much needed life line, a reprieve from the burgeoning democracy movement, and an exit strategy from military to civilian office. Now that Benazir is back, the international media is clamoring for Nawaz Sharif’s return.
Ms. Bhutto’s greatest challenge will be to redeem this tawdry trade-off by using her popularity and skills to leverage this modest political opening into something resembling genuine democracy. Her first step should be to insist that those parliamentary elections are open to all, including her longtime political rival, Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister. His previous tenure, like hers, was badly flawed. But they are Pakistan’s two most popular politicians, and without the participation of both of them there can be no Pakistani democracy.
Had the minus two plan worked would we one day have to hear that there can be no talk of genuine democracy in Bangladesh without the Hasina-Khaleda duo? What kind of democracy will we have in their absence? They are, after all, the only leaders we have who are actually “popular.” They have the unique power to draw spontaneous crowds of hundreds and thousands, and they win their seats in parliament with natural ease. This is not an exercise in nostalgia. No doubt both have failed us as leaders. But what are our alternatives for credible, legitimate leadership? As two astute columns in today’s New Age by Mahtab Haider and Nihal Singh point out, there is a possibility that Benazir will play democracy while Musharraf carries out business as usual.
http://www.newagebd.com/edit.html
The Pakistan saga is unfolding so it is unclear whether Benazir will indeed keep her side of the bargain with Musharraf. But the question worth raising is: Are we to face a similar fate where a bickering litter of neophytes in parliament play democracy while real power remains in other hands?
The Bangladeshi blogosphere has done a credible job of bringing up the Trust Bank-gate story. In particular, the work of Mash at Docstrangelove in investigating things is to be commended. As the Bangladeshi blogosphere continues to discuss and dig up more on the Trust bank-gate, a few issues need to be clarified and separate:
1. The issue of the outstanding loan: There is a claim made that the maximum that Gen. Ahmad would have been able to borrow was Taka 500 since he only owned Taka 1000 worth of shares. I am not sure if the regulation says that. The regulation (as reported here at Mukti) says that
“the total amount of the loan facilities extendable to a Director or to his relatives should not exceed 50% of the paid-up value of the shares of that bank held in Director’s own name.”
Based on the Trust Bank prospectus, we know that Gen. Ahmad owed nearly 1 crore taka at the end of 2005. Gen. Ahmad became CAS only in June 15, 2005.
A plain reading of the regulation tells us that there is a limitation on loan facilities that can be extended (”extendible”) to directors, suggesting that the bar is on the director using his or her position to get new loan facilities for herself or her relatives. I am not sure that this applies to existing loan facilities that are outstanding when a person become a director. It makes sense to read the regulation that way, as presumably, the director had no influence on the bank’s decision-making process before she became the director.
What I would like to know then is this:
i. Was Moeen U Ahmad a Director of the Trust Bank before he became the CAS?
ii. When exactly did he take the loan? If he was not a director before June 15, and if the loan was taken before June 15, barring other regulations that limit how much a person can borrow (from the Bangladesh bank, or the army - I guess this is also where the fact that Iqbal Ahmad was the MD comes into play…) , it would seem that Gen. Moeen was perfectly within his rights to borrow Taka 1 Cr., assuming that no other pressures (political, or monetary) were put on the bank lending officers for the money.
2. But this of course leads us to the second issue - which I think is the more important one, and one we should not lose sight of. Let’s say he was within his rights to borrow Taka 1 Cr. How in the world did he pay off Tk. 66 lakh in the course of one year. I think it’s fair to say that the salaries and perks of a Bangladeshi army officer are not large enough to pay off Taka 66 crore in one year. This is the issue we should focus on. I think Mash’s initial post appropriately focussed on this issue first. We must not lose sight of it.
3. Also we should ask: What, realistically, given the salary and emoluments of a Bangladeshi army officer of Gen. Moeen’s experience and position, is the maximum that a prudential lending officer can give and hope to have paid back through honest means. I doubt that the amount is more than 20-30 lakh takas. Let’s say, arguendo, that the amount is Taka 50 lakh. If Gen. Moeen did in fact borrow more than that then he knew that the team at Trust Bank whose Chairman he was had serious issues with their loan appraisal and disbursement processes. It would seem to me that as Chairman, he had a fiduciary duty to look into this, and possibly do something about this…
4. Let’s take Gen. Ahmad’s claim that he actually did not borrow Taka 1 crore at face value. If that is the case, then Trust Bank has pretty clearly provided false information in its prospectus. The Board of Directors sign off at the end of the prospectus, and make representations etc. about the accuracy of the information in it. There’s got to be some repurcussions under the law for false and misleading statements in a prospectus in a public issue…
The bottom line is that Gen. MU Ahmad owes us a better explanation than we have received.
Following the national id card plan, a considerable imposition on the poor, the army chief revealed the government’s plans to henceforth provide VIP treatment for expatriates. As reported by New Age Oct. 23 front page http://www.newagebd.com/front.html#e:
The army chief informed the audience that the matter of giving national VIP treatment to expatriate Bangladeshis was now at the final stage and it would be announced soon.
‘You will get priority at police stations, in healthcare services… in buying property… you’ll enjoy quota and get priority in those cases,’ he said.
What is the rationale for this? Returning NRBs would no doubt bring great benefits for the society and the economy. But priority at police stations, for example, would be a blatant violation of Article 27 of the Constitution: Equality before law and equal protection of law. Article 26 states that “Laws inconsistent with fundamental rights are void.” This new promulgation violates the Constitution and will not stand up in the courts. NRBs should return to Bangladesh with an eye to doing good for the country, not cutting already overlong queues and hoarding already scarce benefits. Red tape, mismanagement in provision of government service etc. must be cut for the benefit of all citizens. The economy needs s jump start but not at the expense of the poor and the marginalized.
Moustaches of the nineteenth century.
My favorite post so far is entitled “The Second Greatest Disappointment of the Modern Age”.
The death of the monocle signaled a sad passing of an age of elegance in men’s single-lensed eyepieces. None of the newfangled devices for correcting the vision in only one eye can even compare.
This gentleman’s closely trimmed sideburns results in a rakish 1:1 ratio, possibly even a scandalous negative ratio of 1:0.5. Shocking. In a more licentious age, I’m sure many a tipsy lady’s ankle would have been exposed to him during a beach visit.
‘Tis a true assessment of the state of things, the first paragraph is.
The daily wages of a day laborer in rural Bangladesh is roughly around Taka 80-120 during the harvesting season. In the lean periods, it’s much much lower, if he is lucky to get employment at all. A rickshawalla, from what I understand, gets to keep about Taka 90-120 of his earnings at the end of a hard day of toil and trouble, and this is one a good day. That’s the money that’s used to pay for food and shelter, for himself and his family.
But now the government will force him to spend Taka 30 of that amount for a laminated mandatory national ID card. So a four member family will have to spend Taka 120 - roughly a day’s worth of labor - to get access to the courts of the land, other government services, and even the services of microfinance institutions.
The word “disenfranchisement” comes to mind.
The National ID is a good idea. But being counted as a citizen of the land should not be contingent on being able to pay for being counted.
Using a Truth Commission to fix the corruption problem is like using a hammer to remove screws.
HM (His Majesty) Ershad has a little piece on the Truth Commission in Daily Star today which is wayyyyy off base, though it somehow meanders its way to a sensible conclusion. ANM Nurul Haque has a pretty good piece which is worth checking out - though he doesn’t raise the issue raised by my analogy above.
I am glad to see that there is some talk of the place of plea bargains. I raised the plea bargains as a possibility for flexible decision-making under the umbrella of the rule of law months ago, as regular readers of the blog will recall (see those posts here and here). The plea bargaining idea does deserve some thought.
Plea bargains will mean prosecutorial independence, and prosecutorial independence immediately raises the question of accountability. Prosecutorial independence will make sense only if accompanied by some robust way to keep the prosecutor accountable. We keep coming back to the same issue of accountability again and again, and my fear - based on what we have seen so far - is that those in power thinking about this issue don’t really have a handle on it.
Tacit has some bold predictions in his blog regarding General Moeen’s upcoming visit to the US. It looks like not just General Moeen, but also the Army, Navy and Air Chiefs are coming to DC, as is Lt. Gen. Masud. Check them out here and here. We are entering some very interesting times. Time will only tell how things will turn out.
The Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. Discuss.
Congratulations to Al Gore on winning the Nobel Peace Prize! I have always been an admirer and was hoping for a while that he would run for President again. Here’s an Op-Ed from the New York Times that has remained in my mind over the years. This came out during Gore’s years in the “wilderness”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/opinion/23abdrabboh.html
Eid Mubarak dear readers! It is wonderful to be home in Dhaka for Eid.
So Badruddoza Chowdhury is calling for a national consensus government for the next 10 years.
President of Bikalpa Dhara Bangladesh (BDB) Prof AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury yesterday called for a “government of national consensus” for next ten years comprising all democratic and patriotic political parties that believe in common development programmes.
“In order to bring peace and prosperity in our country and to prevent hartal, demonstrations, damage of public property and bloodshed in the post-election period, we need a government of national consensus for at least ten years,” Badruddoza Chowdhury said at an iftar party at city’s Sheraton Hotel.
Said HM Ershad who was present as the invitation-only iftar in response to the proposal:
“It’s a new idea. We need to discuss it within our party.”
Actually, it’s not a new idea at all. BAKSAL, anyone? It was a bad idea then, it’s a bad idea now. And read 10 years as “indefinitely”.
Seriously, B Chy - 10 years would be around a fifth of this country’s lifespan, if this idea takes off (the consensus in such a “consensus” government will likely last for 2 months btw, if not less. We Bengalis are a quarrelsome lot - that might be a good thing…). Do recall that by some people’s measurements, we did have a national “Jatiyo” consensus government between 81 and 90. It too was a bad idea, and you were right then about why it lacked, what do I call it, legitimacy…
Some people have a hard time understanding what our needs are as a polity. What we need is accountability, and a system that generates accountability. Others have stated things more eloquently (there’s a number of the Federalist Papers that talk about factions and the benefits of divided power in a system of checks and balances, for example, that I am too lazy to go and dig up…) But since I am partial (may be even slightly egotistical), I am going to link to something I wrote a few weeks ago. It’s not very long. Read particularly the last couple of paragraphs. Where is accountability in a “national unity government” system going to come from?
I hope this idea of a national consensus government of some degree of permanence dies the silent, unmourned death that it deserves. I fear it won’t.
Here are some exclusive photos and videos from Burma courtesy of a member on the ground from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group of Benetech:
I am following the events in Burma with keen interest. NYTimes has an interesting article on the background of the Buddhist monks’ uprising. The first few paragraphs are thought-provoking:
But instead of asking for their daily donations of food, they held the bowls upside down, the black lacquer surfaces reflecting the light.
It was a shocking image in the devoutly Buddhist nation. The monks were refusing to receive alms from the military rulers and their families — effectively excommunicating them from the religion that is at the core of Burmese culture.
That gesture is a key to understanding the power of the rebellion that shook Myanmar last week.
—
Begging is a ritual that expresses a profound bond between the ordinary Buddhist and the monk. “The people are feeding the monks and the monks are helping the people make merit,” said Josef Silverstein, an expert on Myanmar at Rutgers University. “When you refuse to accept, you have broken the bond that has tied them for centuries together.”
The article goes onto say that the Buddhist clergy has not always stood up against the junta in power since the student’s rebellion in 1988. In fact, the junta has been allowed to gain legitimacy by associating itself with the religious leadership:
The junta has gone to great lengths to identify itself with Buddhism. Like their predecessors through the centuries, the generals have been busy building temples, supporting monasteries and carrying out religiously symbolic acts. In 1999, they regilded the spire of the Shwedagon Pagoda, which now glitters with 53 tons of gold and 4,341 diamonds on the crowning orb.
The gilding of the spire was a high-risk ploy for an unpopular regime, an act permitted only to kings and legitimate rulers. When the two-ton, seven-tier finial was added and the spire was complete, the nation held its breath, waiting for the earth to send a signal of disapproval through lightning or thunder or floods, Ms. Jordt said. But nature remained indifferent.
“Aung pyi!” the generals shouted. “We won!”
But yet, Buddhism is too deeply-rooted in Burmese culture for the clergy for the clergy to be removed as a - if not the - locus of moral legitimacy. And as the article claims, it is when the moral support of such a force is removed that a junta that has been quite comfortable with the complaisance and complicity of its large neighbors finds itself tottering.
I find myself chasing some interesting wisps of thought, whose outlines I can barely make out, as I consider the monks’ uprising. There is a lot to think about here. I hope to be able to write more as the story unfolds, but I think I need to sort out some of these thoughts in my own mind first. In particular (and very incoherently), about the mixture of religion and politics; the (in)validity of secularist critiques when at the end of the day, moral legitimacy (rightly or wrongly) belongs in a society to those who can w(b)ear the mantle of religion and tradition; what to do when religion and tradition still have a moral claim upon the imagination of the polity, but the religious elite have been silent, absent or worse, disappeared…
There are lessons here, definitely, for us in Bangladesh [/place your own country here]. But there are debates here that are pertinent not only to Bangladesh [/your country], but elsewhere in the world, Muslim and otherwise. We lose out on much richness of thought and experience when we isolate the debate, as has often been done, to our history and condition. We would do well to peer at the begging bowls held upside down, to see if we can make out our own reflections.
Comments are welcome.
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