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Kudos to Amra Kojon for an incredible show last night in Boston. Every aspect of the show was beautifully executed - from song selection, to choreography, to stage design, to the music… This was the first time I had been able to go to an Amra kojon show. I had heard that they were very very good. I could scarcely have imagined how good! I can honestly say that you made us all proud.
May we have the good fortune of seeing many more of these shows.
Via Matthew Yglesias, pure genius:
Finally! Third week of December.
And with it a guarantee of an interesting next few months.
Two questions/thoughts that are foremost in my mind:
1. What are they going to do about the two netris?
2. How are they going to protect themselves so that the long knives are not out for them as soon as they give up power? The credibility of the protection they create over the next few months will be directly proportional to the credibility of the election process.
OK, my blogging juices are flowing again.
This, from the Daily Star today caught my eye:
Polls by Dec, president tells Prince Richard
I am all for people being able to call for the return of democracy in Bangladesh. Foreign governments and government officials, even. Even the Queen of England, as the official head of the British government. But what standing does Prince Richard, or Duke of Gloucester Richard Alexander Walter George, have for calling for the return of democracy in Bangladesh while visiting Dhaka? I think the appropriate response to the Duke of Gloucester saying anything about anything is “How about we talk about this, you twit, after you’ve turned in your royal title which you didn’t earn, and your emoluments and wealth, which you also didn’t earn, and you’ve earned an honest day’s living?” Seriously.
I could do with a “disaster” or two in my life too of this sort. Full story here.
The increased media interest in her has meant that writing a full novel was next to impossible, she told Radio 4’s Front Row.
Lessing, 88, also said she would probably now be giving up writing novels altogether.
Her latest book is the partly fictional memoir entitled Alfred and Emily.
Since her Nobel win she has been constantly in demand, she said.
“All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.”
Ms. Lessing - it’s called a press agent.
As my brother says, in not so many words, when I complain about the many distractions of coming to see him, “Stop bitching, shut yourself up in the room, and just write. It’s not my fault you have the attention span of a three year old.” He’s a little bit more eloquent, but this is a family-friendly blog.
The paper I’m currently writing (about contract law and Islamic finance, if you are interested…) will be a fine work of fiction.
I would like to note that Sajid Huq is no longer affiliated with Addafication.com, and has not been since September. His posts will, as soon as possible, be removed from this site.
Bangladesh is getting a credit rating.
A must-read post by Asif Saleh at Drishtipat blog about the proposed NSC. The most thought-provoking segment of the piece -
Someone please ask the good old pol-sci professor to give us an example of another country where in stead of the police force, a security council is needed to ensure internal security. Secondly, since when a security council is used to decide on food and energy issues? With lots of deals on coal and energy involving a lot of cash coming up, this should raise the red flags on any one’s mind, if it hasn’t yet.
My quick-fire two cents on the issue:
1. I would have thought that the SOE government would have tried harder to distinguish itself as often as it could from HM Ershad’s playbook.
2. The cost of a new government setting its own agenda a number of important issues will increase drastically. This is a good or bad thing - based on one’s perspective.
3. The ability of the SOE government to continue to set the agenda of any new government on a number of issues will increase drastically. This is a good or bad thing - based on one’s perspective.
4. The SOE government sees quite clearly where the waters are most dangerous. (See Leela’s last post on food riots.) The energy policy stuff being tied in with national security (though NOT internal security( I do not see as necessarily being strange (though the issue Asif bhai raises is worth keeping in mind.) BUT tying in food with internal security suggests how acute the SOE government sees the current food crisis as being…
5. But on the other hand, the NSC has talked about pretty openly for a while (too lazy to link to anything right now). This makes the SOE’s government near-neglect of the food price situation last fall/winter all the more puzzling.
6. I continue to hope that with regard to food prices and such like, they’re reading a little bit more Hayek, liberally seasoned with Keynes, and a little bit (well, ok, much much) less Marx. I doubt it…
Readers of this blog know that I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I have been ever since Matthew K. Barton introduced me to LOTR back in fifth grade at South Breeze.
For those of you who share my juvenile obsession with all things Tolkien, an interesting post by a couple of law students on property law in Lord of the Rings. And a follow-up at Volokh Conspiracy.
This is the message I got when I tried to sign in to write a post in Istanbul earlier in the week:
Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir.
T.C. Fatih 2.Asliye Hukuk Mahkemesi 2007/195 Nolu Kararı gereği bu siteye erişim engellenmiştir.
Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance.
Awesome
Professor Bradford DeLong has this pointer:
You take a look at the standard Human Development Indicator variables–GDP per capita, infant mortality, education–and you try to throw together an HDI for Cuba in the late 1950s, and you come out in the range of Japan, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Israel. Today? Today the UN puts Cuba’s HDI in the range of Lithuania, Trinidad, and Mexico…Thus I don’t understand lefties who talk about the achievements of the Cuban Revolution: “…to have better health care, housing, education, and general social relations than virtually all other comparably developed countries.” Yes, Cuba today has a GDP per capita level roughly that of–is “comparably developed”–Bolivia or Honduras or Zimbabwe, but given where Cuba was in 1957 we ought to be talking about how it is as developed as Italy or Spain.
Sharp, insightful analysis by Firas Ahmad at Islamica Magazine on Barack Obama’s calculated distancing of himself from the American Muslim community. Choice paragraphs:
So if Obama has a campaign strategist worth his or her weight, we will never hear any serious public support or defense of Muslims from him or his campaign. For Muslims to demand anything from him simply demonstrates a misunderstanding of reality. Muslim support for Obama is akin to George Bush’s support for democracy in the Middle East. The mere association with the former will undercut the credibility of the latter. It is an analogy that Muslims should understand.
Obama’s lack of public defense of Islam is not so much an indictment against him as it is a demonstration of the infantile state of Muslim political participation in America.
…
This is a political reality that Muslims in America must face. It is a clear demonstration that the collective efforts of Muslim institution building over the last 20 years have largely failed to make any real progress when it comes to impacting the American political process, at least at the national level. Muslims have found the perfect candidate, but cannot vocally support him for fear that if they do, they may be the reason he loses. How is that for a wake-up call.
…
If Muslims do not want to suffer the indignation of political irrelevance for many elections to come, instead of giving money to politicians, they should start investing in journalism scholarships. They should establish fellowships for Muslim academics to take a year off and write a book for a general audience, and then back them up with a PR firm to get the book on a best seller list. They should invest in publications that demonstrate a breadth and depth of thinking on a range of issues. They should invest in think tanks that analyze public issues and present actual value to the overall public discussion. All of these institutions exist right now for Muslims in America. But for the most part they are underfunded, underappreciated and undervalued. Because the community in general has not rallied behind them, they are for the most part invisible. Because they are invisible, Muslims are effectively invisible when it comes to Obama or any other serious candidate.
Read the whole thing.
If you have checked out Islamica Magazine, you should. The pieces are extremely well-written, and a wide variety of opinions and perspectives are represented. The team leading the effort is incredible (full disclosure: A number of them are friends who I have a lot of regard and affection for at a personal level.) Pick up a copy at your nearest Barnes and Noble. You will be pleasantly surprised by the amazing production values of the magazine.
Daily Star reports:
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) yesterday asked all commercial banks to submit proposals within two weeks on how to reduce interest spread between lending and deposit rates and charges for different services.
The central bank observed that the state-owned commercial banks charge reasonably for different services, but the rates charged by local private commercial banks are high while those by foreign commercial banks, too high.
…
“We are not imposing anything on the banks respecting the climate of free market economy,” he said adding, “But at the same time we are alert so that none can take any irrational opportunity.”
Can someone explain what this “irrational opportunity” is?
I think BAB’s response has been pretty much on-point
BAB Chairman Nazrul Islam Majumder, however, defended the current rates saying that running private commercial banks requires higher expenses as they need skilled staff on high pay.
“It will be difficult for us to reduce the lending rates unless the interest on savings certificates and treasury bonds are slashed,” Majumder said, talking to the reporters.
“The governor has assured us that the central bank will set the interest rate spread after discussion with all stakeholders,” he said.
There’s a better way. It’s called letting competition do it’s magic.
There are arguments to be made for intervention in many cases. This isn’t one of those cases.
Does this setup from the Middle Ages in Europe looks familiar?
As usual, the podestà – a city official – was the interrogator, who regarded external evidence as providing mere clues of guilt. Europe was then still governed by Roman law which required confessions in order to convict. As Grafton describes horrifyingly, once the prisoner’s answers no longer satisfied the podestà, the torturer tied the man’s or woman’s arms behind their back and the prisoner would then be lifted by a pulley, agonisingly, towards the ceiling. “Then, on orders of the podestà, the torturer would make the accused ‘jump’ or ‘dance’ – pulling him or her up, then releasing the rope, dislocating limbs and inflicting stunning pain.”
And some food for thought:
When a member of one of the Trent Jewish families, Samuel, asked the podestà where he had heard that Jews needed Christian blood, the interrogator replied – and all this while, it should be remembered, Samuel was dangling in the air on the pulley – that he had heard it from other Jews. Samuel said that he was being tortured unjustly. “The truth, the truth!” the podestà shouted, and Samuel was made to “jump” up to eight feet, telling his interrogator: “God the Helper and truth help me.” After 40 minutes, he was returned to prison.
Once broken, the Jewish prisoners, of course, confessed. After another torture session, Samuel named a fellow Jew. Further sessions of torture finally broke him and he invented the Jewish ritual murder plot and named others guilty of this non-existent crime. Two tortured women managed to exonerate children but eventually, in Grafton’s words, “they implicated loved ones, friends and members of other Jewish communities”. Thus did torture force innocent civilians to confess to fantastical crimes. Oxford historian Lyndal Roper found that the tortured eventually accepted the view that they were guilty.
I have been kept from blogging for the last few weeks for a variety of reasons. First, soon after returning from Dhaka, I fell ill with the flu and it took me about a week to recover after a week of coughing and general feverishness. And then, I got busy with organizing this conference on climate change on campus. Of course, there are papers and whatnot due over the course of the next few weeks, but do expect me to write on these pages more often than I have recently (as low as that bar is…), particularly as February 21 approaches.
In the mean time: I find many arguments for torture in the Bangladeshi context (see comment section in the link) to be appalling. The argument of “what if a bomb were to go off killing thousands (or even tens of people) if you didn’t torture” just don’t apply here. The best argument that can be made is that the security apparatus has limited resources and certain ends, and these ends have to be met under the constraints of the limited resources, and torture seems to be the shortest route. If one were to argue at the level of crass utilitarianism the way that such arguments are made (and I am in no way prepared to concede that this is the level at which the arguments is to be played out) , then one is must, to defend the pro-torture position, ask what the ends really are, whether torture really gets you there, and whether alternative routes that are claimed to be unavailable (such as people using their heads a little better) are really so. I think any honest discussion will find that torture of the kind that is alleged to have happened to Tasneem Khalil, or for that matter, to Tarique Zia, or Ghiasuddin Mamun fails even a first-pass cost-benefit test. Can someone tell me what the ends are of such torture - except to intimidate, and to punish without trial or evidence? Let’s assume that the ends are legitimate - information - does torture really get you accurate and credible information? And let’s say it does (and there’s enough evidence out there that it doesn’t), then how does torture stack up against alternatives? Everyone claims to know that these political figures were corrupt. And yet when it comes to getting evidence for it, we have to depend upon torture! Paper trails, people, paper trails… If your best case for torture is that you are too lazy or inefficient or ineffective to find inevitable paper trails - then I am sorry, you do not have a very good case at all.
The discussion though, must go beyond that. The truth is that we have not internalized the value of human dignity and human life. That’s where the discussion should be, but rarely is.
And this lack of internalization that manifests itself in torture is not just a problem we face because we have a military government. It’s a little disingenuous to claim that things would be much better had we been under the BNP or AL.
“Friends and Comrades, the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere. I do not know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the Father of the Nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that. Nevertheless, we will never see him again as we have seen him for these many years. We will not run to him for advice and seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not to me only, but to millions and millions in this country. And it is a little difficult to soften the blow by any other advice that I or anyone else can give you.The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light. The light that has illumined this country for these many years will illumine this country for many more years, and a thousand years later, that light will be seen in this country and the world will see it and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that light represented something more than the immediate past, it represented the living, the eternal truths, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom.All this has happened when there was so much more for him to do. We could never think that he was unnecessary or that he had done his task. But now, particularly, when we are faced with so many difficulties, his not being with us is a blow most terrible to bear.
A madman has put an end to his life, for I can only call him mad who did it, and yet there has been enough of poison spread in this country during the past years and months, and this poison has had an effect on people’s minds. We must face this poison, we must root out this poison, and we must face all the perils that encompass us, and face them not madly or badly, but rather in the way that our beloved teacher taught us to face them.
The first thing to remember now is that none of us dare misbehave because he is angry. We have to behave like strong and determined people, determined to face all the perils that surround us, determined to carry out the mandate that our great teacher and our great leader has given us, remembering always that if, as I believe, his spirit looks upon us and sees us, nothing would displease his soul so much as to see that we have indulged in any small behaviour or any violence.
So we must not do that. But that does not mean that we should be weak, but rather that we should, in strength and in unity, face all the troubles that are in front of us. We must hold together, and all our petty troubles and difficulties and conflicts must be ended in the face of this great disaster. A great disaster is a symbol to us to remember all the big things of life and forget the small things of which we have thought too much. In his death he has reminded us of the big things of life, the living truth, and if we remember that, then it will be well with India…
It was proposed by some friends that Mahatmaji’s body should be embalmed for a few days to enable millions of people to pay their last homage to him. But it was his wish, repeatedly expressed, that no such thing should happen, that this should not be done, that he was entirely opposed to any embalming of his body, and so we decided that we must follow his wishes in this matter, however much others might have wished otherwise.
And so the cremation will take place on Saturday in Delhi city by the side of the Jamuna river. On Saturday afternoon, about 11.30, the bier will be taken out at Birla House and it will follow a prescribed road and go to the Jamuna river. The cremation will take place there at about 4 P.M. The place and the route will be announced by radio and the Press.
People in Delhi who wish to pay their last homage should gather along this route. I will not advise too many of them to come to Birla House, but rather to gather on both sides of this long route from Birla House to the Jamuna river. And I trust that they will remain there in silence without any demonstrations. That is the best way and the most fitting way to pay homage to this great soul. Also, Saturday should be a day of fasting and prayer for all of us.
Those who live elsewhere, out of Delhi and in other parts of India, will no doubt take such part as they can in this last homage. For them also, let this be a day of fasting and prayer. And at the appointed time for cremation, that is 4 pm on Saturday afternoon, people should go to the river or to the sea and offer prayers there. And while we pray, the greatest prayer that we can offer is to take a pledge to dedicate ourselves to the truth, and to the cause for which this great countryman of ours lived and for which he has died. That is the best prayer that we can offer him and his memory. That is the best prayer we can offer to India and ourselves.
JAI HIND.”
- Jawaharlal Nehru, January 30, 1948
I am now back after winter-break in Dhaka, and I should restart posting soon. A lot happening right now - a lot to write about.
But to get rolling again - my stock filler on this blog. From today’s Daily Star:
When the country was facing an acute dearth of edible oil supply last year, two business groups exported over 20,000 tonnes of edible oil to India at rates below those of local and international markets to get tax benefits on importing from traders there.
Three separate investigations have found that these traders–United Edible Oils Ltd and Bay Fishing Co Ltd–were involved in under-invoicing in order to help their Indian partners get tax benefit.
But this kind of thing also creates some additional headaches for the authorities - beyond the lower supply of the commodity:
“The business houses might also have involvement in money laundering under the guise of exporting to India,” the official said preferring anonymity.
Via Marginalrevolution.com, yet another lesson in arbitrage:
What high tech wonder-tools does RMG use to defeat Ticketmaster’s captchas, the annoying jumble of characters used to prove your humanity? Is it Optical Character Recognition? Something even more futuristic, maybe web 3.0-ish? Nah. Cipriano Garibay, president of RMG Technologies, boasts: “We pay guys in India $2 an hour to type the answers.”
And lifted from the comments at MR:
“We pay guys in India $2 an hour to type the answers”
Smart, but spammers have had another better solution: They hosted their own pornographic site and needed users to solve a captcha to view their pics.
Guess where this captchas came from?
An incredibly powerful piece from the inimitable Rumi bhai:
It’s a Mess
The demolition of Rangs Bhaban was a symbolic equivalent of the 1/11 military government. ..
Look at the mess this government has put us into. This is what happens when the wrong people embark into a job which they do not know how to handle and which is not their job either.
If there is one piece you will read in the Bangladeshi blogosphere this week, let it be this one. Read the whole thing.
Via Marginal Revolution.com: Faux Indian Government
A fake government office has been discovered in northern India that collected taxes, provided civic services and even handed out birth and death certificates, a report said Monday.
An office was set up outside Jhansi town in Uttar Pradesh state and 20 people were employed to carry out jobs such as street sweeping.
Officials believe the operation originally started as a scam to collect fees from residents in return for one municipal janitor.
But the leader of the operation, named as Shyam Valmiki, allegedly branched out, opening a functioning office that employed a team of janitors.
“He later seems to have decided to carry on with the office as it did not appear to be a loss-making proposition,” an unnamed police officer was quoted by Times of India saying.
(My italics)
Which naturally leads one to ask - were they providing the services better than the government run offices?
This also has some relevance to the fascinating discussion about industrialists v. entrepreneurs that’s going on in the comments of Leela’s post. My quick Taka 1.372 (under prevailing exchange rates): the appropriate distinction is to worry about is between access capitalists and entrepreneurs/industrialists, rather than between industrialists and entrepreneurs. Managerial ability should not be as easily discounted as I have seen in it be in that discussion. Just ask the Indian guy who’s about to be appointed CEO of Citibank.
OK, back to Administrative law. ‘Cause lawyers are uncommonly bad managers.
I haven’t seen any news of the SOE government releasing the cartoonist Arif. From what I understand, he’s still in custody. I cannot imagine how bad the conditions are that he has been held under. I shudder every time I think of where and how this completely innocent individual is. It was a travesty of justice to send him to prison. Every minute that he is kept there is a travesty of justice as well. No fair-minded person should think otherwise.
In light of the recent “pardons” of the RU professors, I say that the government “pardon” Arif as well. I do not have any doubt in my mind that Arif did anything wrong, that there is no crime per se that he needs to be granted forgiveness for. I have not a shred of doubt in my mind that his imprisonment was unjust.
But I beg, beseech, the government to pardon Arif. If they can save face and even gain advantage by doing so, let them. Let them portray to the world that they were right to send him there, and now they are merciful and generous in letting him out. But let Arif go free. Pardon him, please.
Via Shadakalo:
“Syed Muztoba Ali once wrote about someone that his brain is so twisted, if you drive a nail through it, it will come out as a screw.”
I’ll have to use this line someday.
Still writing that darn paper. It has to get done in the next two days.
AsifY bhai rightfully complains about Mainul Hossein’s statement about the filing of the cases against the Jamaat leaders “belittling Bangladesh”. It’s meaningless rhetoric, insulting both to the speaker and the audience. I’ll tell you what belittling Bangladesh is. It’s the clear injustice of this (and he’s still not free, it must be added). And the absolute disproportionality of this.
That being said, I can’t help wonder if the claim that individuals cannot file sedition and treason charges without government support does not have some merit. Consider (some quick thoughts - I apologize for the incoherence of them given how quickly I am typing this out):
1. The crime of sedition is by all accounts a serious one, and one that has serious consequences for the one who is accused of it. Do we really want all and sundry to be able to trigger a government reaction to something someone says by bringing such complaints? What kind of safeguards do we want to build into the process? What should the standards be for triggering such a process? I would claim that given the seriousness of the crime and its consequences, the standards for bringing such a claim should be pretty high?
2. Besides, what should the limits of the sedition laws be, given the seriousness of the charge, and given our constitutional commitment to freedom of expression? Should Hannan making statements on TV about the war be enough to bring the claim to court? Think about what such a facility do to political expression. And not just public political expression - people walking in silent rallies for example. But also semi-public political expression - this blog for example. And also private political expression - that quintessential Bangladeshi habit of whining when dining on cha, paan and fuchka.
There must be some consistency and vision to where and how we draw our lines. We cannot be both for Arif and for putting Hannan away for statements he made on national TV. I understand the emotions that animate us - but let’s keep the eye on the ball?
3. The legal case: What I’ve seen of the legislation that sedition charges are being brought on suggests that the Barrister -newspaperman-Adviser has some grounds for defending what has been done - without needed to twist himself into pretzels (or for that matter, having to resort to “belittling” rhetoric). New Age gives us some indication of some of the relevant law. From what I understand from reading the New Age article, it seems that this is the process:
* Individual shall (in the absence of reasonable excuse) bring case under 121 etc. to the magistrate or the police officer.
[sidenote - the "shall" is highly problematic, don't you think?]
* Magistrate is required to start the proceedings
* 196 bars any court of taking cognisance of any offence of sedition and treason under section 121A and 123A without sanction from the government.
* Yet the former High Court judges citing different provisions claim that the magistrates are required to start the proceedings.
A few issues:
i. I’d like to know from someone who knows the law in Bangladesh what the “starting the proceedings” means? Does it mean they have to file it? Does it mean that they are required to ask the police to file an FIR? The latter has an ultra vires feel to it. 196 clearly says that you can’t give cognisance - which would suggest that as a magistrate you can start “proceedings” only to the point where you are giving cognisance to the claim. Where is that line legally drawn? I would think that a magistrate requiring the police to file an FIR for a sedition case is “giving cognisance to the claim”, but one would have to look at the caselaw on this to be really sure.
ii. Further, I would like to know what the relevant rules are for the police to register or register file an FIR. Are they required to register an FIR? How much discretion is there under the appropriate police regulations for register an FIR? Under what conditions can they look at an ultra vires action taken by a magistrate court and refuse to register an FIR? And can starting the proceedings with mean anything less than allowing an FIR to be register - putting something in their daily GD log for example? Plus, given that 196 defines what the procedural requirements for starting an action are -requirements that include sanction from the government - is not agreeing to register an FIR really so indefensible?
iii. It’s useful to think of the need for government sanction as one of the burdens of production for bringing such a claim to a justice. The law seems to say that you have standing to file a criminal case of this nature (note - it is a criminal charge - not a civil case, where the claim is that the harm has been done to the individual bringing the case) - but you have to make sure that there are certain hoops you have jump through - including getting government sanction. I note the possible appropriateness of this in 1 and 2. And given the points I raise there, it certainly does make more sense to me that the private citizen filing the charges should bear the burden than the viewpoint of the anonymous judges who think that bringing a claim creates a duty on the the police to go out an ask the government for sanction.
4. What is interesting is what the administrative law requirement is for a request to act (here, giving sanction). In the US, for example, the Administrative Procedure Act requires that the denial of a petition to act by a government agency must be accompanied with some reasoned statement of why they refused to act. Court deference to such reasons have varied depending on the context (though generally, there’s a fair amount of deference to agencies). Is there such a requirement for a reasoned statement of why a petition to sanction is to be denied there in the relevant administrative law in Bangladesh? I simply don’t know enough - and by that I mean, I don’t know anything.
But if there is such a requirement, that reasoning might be appropriate for the media and the public (if not the courts) to scrutinize.
5. I understand that some of the claim being brought was over the activities of the accused individuals in 1971. It seems problematic to me that sedition and treason charges can be brought for activities in pre-December 16, 1971 Bangladesh. War crime charges, yes. Murder, rape and torture charges, absolutely. But sedition and treason charges against a state that was yet not independent and sovereign over its own territory?
6. Leaving aside those who committed murder, rape and torture - for the big chunk of the population in 1971 that performed various tasks (supplying milk to Pakistani soldiers, for example) and held various views that can be clearly be shown to be seditious and treasonous to the Bangladeshi state, what is the appropriate measure to take? A few things need to be admitted here. Notwithstanding our national foundation myths, this group would constitute a substantial portion of the population. Millions, tens of millions of people. This suggests a couple of things:
i. We must be wary about judicializing what to do about these people, if only for the reasons of practicality and manageability.
ii. This really is a political issue - better taken care of in political processes. (And I would be willing to bet that if put to a vote, the vast majority of the country would not like to have this issue revisited.)
7. Those who committed rape, murder and torture are different though. I believe the criminal code and common law in the courts define these crimes quite precisely. I can understand the possible legitimacy of bringing criminal charges under the law of the time.
8. Even if legal charges are not (or cannot) be brought against the individuals who committed these crimes - these individuals must still confront the morality of their actions in 1971. I am sorry, but Mr. Hannan’s argument that this was a situation of civil war does not give moral cover to what they did, even if it might give legal cover. The most powerful response to it in the TV show where Mr. Hannan made his comments was the statement of the son of one of the intellectuals carried away, tortured and killed by the Al-Badr/As-Shams monsters. Yes, those who fought on the field of battle side by side with Pakistani soldiers against Bangladeshi muktibahini guerillas may claim moral cover under the argument that it was a civil war they were fighting.
But this justification does not extend to those who raped women and children in villages and towns around the country. We know this happened because many of these women exemplified courage and dignity by naming their rapists even in the face of social ostracization, and the camps themselves are well-documented (see Mash’s site for contemporaneous documentary proof). This justification does not extend to those who tied the hands and feet of men (under mere suspicion of collaborate, or worse, because of greed over land) and dragged them on their backs over miles of rough village roads to Pakistani camps, for torture and worse. An uncle of mine was one of these unfortunate victims. This justification does not extend to those who, in the last days of the war, targeted and carried away the cream of our intelligentsia (and civil servants and police officers) in a well-organized, well-documented campaign, committed the most inhuman torture upon them, brutally slaughtered them and left their mutilated bodies to rot in mass graves.
Even Hannan and those he would protect with his rhetoric cannot deny that these things did not happen.
The absolute number of those who died is irrelevant. Whether it was 3,000,000 or 300,000 or 30,000 or even 300 is irrelevant. Whether we choose to call it a civil war or a war of liberation is irrelevant. Whether we can define it as genocide is irrelevant.
For M is for Murder. And O is for Oppression. And R is for Rape. And T is for Torture. And no amount of prevarication or equivocation will change this fact.
We must not forget this.
I continue to work on this paper. And it continues to avoid being completed. And thus I find myself procrastinating.
Today’s procrastination notes: Strange Maps.
My favorites:
Patients per doctor Map of the World ,
The flawed, but fascinating Balkans Map of North America , and
Antarctica sliced differently, wherein Bangladesh gets a slice of the South Pole pie.
Also did you know that the Panama canal runs from the Northwest (Atlantic) to the Southeast (Pacific)? (No, you read that right) This is because of the curl of the Isthmus of Panama.
The article that Leela posted is a fascinating one. AsifY bhai has been goading me, I see, to post on arbitrage. Alas, there is very little time - a big paper is due tomorrow - so all I am going to do is post a few quick notes. These might be even less coherent than my usual babbling.
* My usual attitude towards subsidies on goods like fertilizer (or for that matter, petrol) is that given the porousness of borders with India, if the post-subsidy price is set lower than the (post-subsidy) price in India, there will be smuggling into India. Back in 2005, the word on the street was that a big chunk of petrol consumption in West Bengal was being subsidized by the Bangladeshi government, since petrol and diesel was being smuggled at will to India. (Talk about Bengali unity!)
* Aside from arbitrage through smuggling, it’s hard to do subsidies really well to actually target the ones who need it most. The history of subsidies in East Pakistan and Bangladesh will reveal this to be true.
* More importantly (for the kinds of things that fundamentally get my juices flowing), subsidies encourage rent-seeking behavior. In our country, that has often meant abasement and servility to elites with access, and corruption.
* Basic microeconomics tells you that it makes more sense (in a utility-enhancement sense) to transfer wealth to the individuals who will receive the subsidy directly than to do so indirectly through subsidies (this is even without taking into account the costs of the system…) I can see why you’d want wrinkles in the basic model though, so I won’t push this point too much. Sample thoughts on what kind of wrinkles to add: Dynamic inconsistency. Information and knowledge created through subsidized programs. A misalignment between the incentives of the individual and the government (with the government, or “society” wanting to push certain ends over the other). Externalities.
* How do you explain the smuggling into Bangladesh from India? There likely is a market for fertilizers (outside of the government channels), and the difficult supply of government fertilizer is driving the price up - beyond what fertilizer sellers can get in India + transport and transaction costs. Ergo: Smuggling into Bangladesh.
The presence of this market also has implications for how well these subsidies can be targetted in the first place - as I am sure readers can work out for themselves.
* The slippery slope argument that Tacit makes does not quite work. The simple answer to why give subsidies for fertilizer but not for electricity (though I do believe rural electricity is subsidized in the ‘Desh) or say, cotton candy, might very well be because the returns from such a subsidy, taka for taka, are higher.
Bottom line: I can see why subsidies might seem attractive. But it’s hard to get subsidies right, and reach them to the right people.
I’m just swamped right now with school-work. In particular, I have a rough draft on a long research paper due on Monday, and there is a lot to be done between now and then. The topic? Looking at microfinance institutions as coordinators of private orderings, and what this means for commercialization.
There’s a lot I have had a lot of thoughts about but just no time to write. Rumi bhai’s two posts scrutinizing the recent ambassadorial appointments were ones where I want to say a lot on. The posts are both timely and thought provoking, even though I don’t agree with where he comes out on them. I think Rumi bhai is right to question the reasoning behind the individual appointments. But I don’t think I agree with his reasoning behind the questioning. A small window into my thinking on this matter: There are key tensions in administrative law (a class which I am struggling with right now) between accountability, transparency and expertise. It’s not clear to me a priori that there is no place for political appointments in the bureaucratic positions. I have a lot more to say on this, but I don’t have the time to really draw out my thoughts. I hope some one willl remind me of this in late December.
BTW, check out this blog on the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. There is a lot of activity going on in this area right now. The Siemens case is of some note. I am pretty sure some of the investigations for that litigation extend all the way to Bangladesh.
Another one for the reading pile: Orlando Figes‘ The Whisperer’s: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia. NYTimes has a review today, and it looks fascinating. (Here’s a link to his writings on NY Review of Books.)
I read Figes’ magisterial A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 over the course of three days in 2002. Quite simply one of the most readable pieces of historical scholarship that I’ve come across. It was a page-turner. I could hardly put it down.
For those of you keeping score on my reading pile list - I actually got through 2 out of 3 that I listed the last time around: Children of Hurin and El-Gamal’s Islamic Finance. Not a bad record, I say.
Shadakalo dig up some news that’s related to this post.
A note on my “political fallout” post - which I see continues to be misinterpreted, even by AsifY and Fugstar bhais (see comments here) At no point in the post do I criticize how the government has been approaching the Sidr disaster, and I think that if readers reread my previous post without assuming that I am criticizing, they will be hardpressed to find anything that suggests some kind of judgment of the SOE’s response on my part.
As I note in my comments, I simply have no way of knowing whether they are doing a good job or not. From a distance (cause that’s where I am situated) their approach and attitude seem sincere. Surely, as Fugstar notes, there are logistical, communication and transportation issues that hampered both the pre-Sidr evacuation and post-Sidr relief work. But these are not short-term problems, and one would hardly be fair in criticizing the SOE for them - unless some clear evidence of mismanagement or negligence appears. I have yet to see such evidence, and I do not expect there to have been wilful mismanagement or negligence, given what seems to me to be a sincere approach to the crisis.
(In the mean time, kudos to the planners, both past and present - for it would only be fair to share the credit - for helping us avoid what could have been a larger number of deaths.)
The point of the post however was to put out my neck with an early prediction: There WILL be some political fallout from Cyclone Sidr. No matter how sincere the SOE has been in its response, the resource constraints that a country like ours continues to face have shown themselves in the difficulty that the administration has found in coping with the scale of the disaster. It is, I think, unfair to blame the SOE for these constraints. But what I think about deservedness blame is irrelevant here. The fact of the matter is that it is likely that the SOE government will be viewed as possibly to blame by the people who need relief on the ground for their failure (whatever the cause) for reaching that relief. They will ask why they had to wait, hungry and shelterless, and many will be (understadably) impatient of explanations. Some will think - whether accurately or not - that their MP’s would have been more responsive to their needs, and that they would have been better off under that system. Additionally, as food prices increase, the effects of the disaster will be felt beyond the strike zone of the cyclone, and beyond the temporary wait for electricity. Questions will be asked - and one might think that they will be unfair questions to ask - but it is foreseeable that they will be asked. Perhaps the hungry crowds will be able to understand the sincerity that the Chief Advisor was trying to convey in his statement, and will be inclined to forgive perceived faults. Or perhaps the crowds will be unable to look beyond the fact that they have been waiting for days for some relief that is yet to come. I can imagine it going either way. The Daily Star article seemed to say that it is the latter, as things stand right now. It would be interesting to see evidence of perceptions and reactions on the ground that suggest the contrary.
That’s all I was trying to say. It’s probably my fault for being less than clear - but acknowledging that still doesn’t stop being misinterpreted from smarting.
May be I should have a tag that tells readers when I am being descriptive rather than prescriptive.
This, I felt, was a deeply textured article - and much of it is beautifully written, poetic even.
It poignantly illustrates what those waiting for relief are going through:
The line could be seen even from the sea. Hundreds of men standing in a long line.
…
Among the crowd sits Ali Mia, an ageless old man who still works as a fisherman. An eye gone from an accident when his trawler sank a few years ago, he still wants to eke out a living with his stringy arms and legs. He never looked for any dole-outs.But today, Ali is here because he did not get anything to eat for the last two days. Today is the third day running, and he cannot stand it any more.
“I just need something to eat. Something to fill my tummy. Anything. There is nothing edible left on this island,” Ali says and falls silent.
Moslem had his lunch food in the morning before. He collected the rice rotten by the seawater and fried them.
But there’s more - some indications that this administration is not doing so well in coping with the disaster:
But relief is scanty to arrive, and whatever comes is carried by the navy. Had there been no navy, Dublarchar people would have perished. And the administration is slow to wake up to the reality. In fact, the administration has very scanty idea about the people and life in the islands.
Navy ships waited the whole day today at Mongla with an empty cargo hold. But the administration did not give them any goods.
Perhaps it’s unfair to hold the SOE government accountable, as even the Deputy Commissioner did not seem to know that the islands were inhabited. But it is the nature of things that those in charge will be held accountable. Are we seeing some of that already? Consider the legitimacy implications of Sumon’s uncle’s statement:
Sumon’s pale eyes look sleepy but anxious. “Will we get food today, uncle?” he asks.
“May be, son,” the dark man standing beside him replies. “Don’t get so restless. Let the MP Shab (former lawmaker) come, we will get food.”
Perhaps it’s too early to say what the political fallout will be. (Perhaps it’s inappropriate to bring politics into the picture at all given the devastation and destruction that we’ve witnessed?) Perhaps statements of the kind the Chief Advisor made to the hungry crowds - with a showing of care and competence - will be enough.
They are the brave people of the sea and sunshine, as Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed mentioned in his short speech of encouragement to the islanders.
“You are a brave people, you have faced the calamities with valor that also gives us courage,” he said.
But as Jyoti bhai mentioned, it is inevitable that prices and inflation will be impacted by the cyclone. The political fallout from the cyclone in the coming months is worth keeping an eye on.
Mohammed Haneef’s article on Musharraf’s latest shenanigans deserves sharing. Its absolutely brilliant.
In my 15 years in journalism, I have covered three coups. And as I walked towards my office last Saturday, I had the cynicism of someone who has seen it all before. As I entered the BBC offices on a chilly Saturday afternoon in London, a senior Pakistan hand, who like me had interrupted his cosy weekend to cover the story, wondered aloud why the general was taking so long before appearing on national television and explaining his actions.
…Last Saturday as I arrived at my desk, Musharraf had already started his address. And it was immediately clear to me that he had fallen into that aging dictator’s familiar trap: He had written his own speech.
I exaggerate because he only occasionally glanced at his notes and for 40 minutes talked, well, gibberish; the kind of stuff that only journalists and think-tank-wallahs would take seriously.
…
I have been accused of punctuation abuse often enough to take these things in my stride, but for the 40 minutes that General Musharraf spoke in Urdu, he didn’t use one proper sentence.He replaced his verbs with hand gestures, nouns slipped off his shrugged shoulders, adjectives quivered under his desk.
And when he said, “Extremists have gone very extreme,” it suddenly occurred to me why his speech pattern seemed so familiar. He was that uncle that you get stranded with at a family gathering when everybody else has gone to sleep but there is still some whisky left in the bottle. And uncle thinks he is about to say something very profound — if you would only pour him one last one.
It’s hilarious - but sadly so, for as Haneef notes towards the end:
When for the last few minutes of his speech he addressed his audience in the West in English, I suddenly felt a deep sense of humiliation. This part of his speech was scripted. Sentences began and ended. I felt humiliated that my President not only thinks that we are not evolved enough for things like democracy and human rights, but because we can’t even handle concepts like proper syntax and grammar.
But lest you place your hopes in the ready alternative of Benazir Bhutto, her niece, Fatima Bhutto has some interesting - perhaps apt - thoughts in an LA Times piece bluntly entitled as “Aunt Benazir’s False Promise”. Choice passage:
The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)
Ms. Bhutto’s political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf’s regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.
I do not envy Pakistan it’s choices. Why is it that I continue to feel that they are in bigger soup than we are, even with our SOE and MUA, FUA, KZ and SH?
Drishtipat Blog has a collection of good links for places to donate to for victims of Cyclone Sidr. I urge readers to donate, and donate generously.
Rezwan bhai has continuous updates of the situation on the ground, and a roundup of reactions in the Bangla blogosphere, including from the ground.
While the death toll just above 2000 as I write this, it’s clear that we’ve been spared the worst. But let the fact that we are not seeing 4 zeros at the end of the casualty figure (I am praying further information does not change this) not prevent us from recognizing the scale of the catastrophe. Sidr has left behind it a trail of destruction and chaos. In the short term, shelter will have to be found, and disease averted . In the long run, lives and communities (and even already fragile ecosystems - the Sundarbans have been directly hit) will need resources to rebuild. We must keep our eye on both.
UPDATE: Jyoti bhai has some further links for places to donate, including the Chief Advisor’s Relief Fund.
Addafication is back online! More posts soon…
We’ve been out of business for the last few days because someone hacked into our administrator account and deleted the entire blog. I have a pretty good idea who did it (and it’s NOT anyone who’s been involved with this blog), and I am sure they are reading this post. I only want to ask, “Why? How does this help your cause - righteous or not - in any way? What does your having done this show anything but wild, unreasonable, unmeasured vindictiveness - precisely of the sort that you’ve been accused of? And why lash out at those who have had nothing to do with your predicament with such stupid behavior? What did you hope to achieve?”
If readers have a problem with anything we’ve written, then they can always leave comments that are on point. We’ve only ever removed comments that are not on point and are insulting to other commentators. If you have a problem with something we’ve NOT written about - then that really is your problem. We never signed up to be a news agency, and we do not owe anyone a duty to post on any topic. As individuals, we write what we want to write about, and we are fiercely protective of this autonomy of thought and action. This autonomy, I must add, is the same freedom that readers have to choose to visit these pages, and read our posts, and form their opinions as to their quality. It cannot be stressed enough - particularly because much of what we write about has to do with current controversies with high stakes that generate strong emotions - that each writer who writes on this blog puts forward his/her own ideas and opinions, and these are not reflections of what the rest of the contributors think or believe. Addafication is a forum, not an organization. It is convenience, not a collective ideology that has brought us together here. If there is a collective vision that has generated this blog, it is the principle of autonomy - and the corresponding possibility of multiplicity of outlook - that I have outlined here.
Pakistan Supreme Court Theme song, here. Watch it before they take it down!
I am trying very, very hard not to be snarky about this.
I can just see how it happened. Some well-connected Aitchison or KSG kid with arm-chair liberal sensibilities, an OK singing voice proposes, shares the idea with his mamoo on the Supreme Court. Next thing you know, they make a recording that weekend, and on Tuesday the song is on the Supreme Court website.
”The voyage is tough
And the weather is rough.
The founder declares his vizhuuuuuuuuuuuuun
Of democracy, faith, tolerance, and compashuuuuuuuuuuuuun
His dream the state shall not
Belong to any religiuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun,
Creed or caste,
Creed or caaaaaaaaaaaaaaste…
Justice for aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalll”
Inspiring stuff. Not. Which is why I guess the Musharraf peeps kept the song in the Supreme Court website even after scrubbing the site clean.
The thing is that getting democracy and the rule of law to be established requires large segments of the political and economic elites to be willing to undertake to make some tough sacrifice of comfort and privilege. For the last 8 years, Pakistani elites have been largely unwilling to sacrifice too much, and thus, democracy, even though it’s been the ostensible aim of the Musharraf government, has continuously been delayed. When I hear or read of LUMS students protesting, I feel something is different in the air this time around. I do not know how deep the sentiments run, and how coherent they are for something long term to come out of this. My gut tells me to not expect too much from South Asian elites. My heart hopes otherwise.
For updates on the Pakistan situation, and some informed analysis, check out Arif Rafiq’s blog at http://www.pakistanpolicy.com/
See also Mannan Ahmad’ blog at http://www.chapatimystery.com/
First couple of lines of the Dawn editorial, worth quoting:
Beyond emergency rule
SATURDAY’S declaration of emergency rule has put an abrupt end to the government’s policy of ‘enlightened moderation’, as borne out by detention of dozens of civil society members within 24 hours of the proclamation. It is ironical that such natural allies against the forces of extremism should now be seen, together with the independent media and the judiciary, as a threat to state power. Both had asserted their freedom, which admittedly tried the patience of the executive. While the independent electronic media did not have the satisfaction of going down laughing on Saturday evening when news channels and radio stations were taken off air, the Supreme Court did. Though in vain, seven judges served a restraining order, barring the government from imposing emergency rule minutes after the issuance of the Provisional Constitutional Order. The restrictions placed on the judiciary and the media have since been validated by several judges of the higher courts who took fresh oaths under the PCO, paving the way for sacking those who did not oblige. However, it comes as a surprise that some of the judges involved in granting bails
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 ups