Hillary Clinton’s visit: Why is Bangladesh Government not upbeat?

As I see it column

The Independent, May 5, 2012

M. Serajul Islam

The visit of a US Secretary of State is to say the least a rare political event for a country like Bangladesh. If I remember correctly, this will be the first one since George Schultz’s visit to Dhaka in the late 1980s. Given the fact that Secretary Hillary was a former First Lady who holds a special position in the administration of President Obama, the visit should be a very important event for Bangladesh. 

Yet, the feeling that one gets is that the visit has caught a lot of people in Bangladesh unaware. Under normal circumstances, the Government should have welcomed this visit as a mark of great success of its foreign policy in particular and governance in general. However, officially the Foreign Ministry did not even come out with any statement on this visit. The Prime Minister’s office mentioned about this visit only as a matter of fact. The national dailies did not even know where to place this news in the front page of its paper. There were few analytical reports about what was expected of the visit.  

The US Ambassador was the only one who was upbeat about the visit. He spoke of Bangladesh in lofty terms and went out of the way to please Bangladesh by describing it as a country with a great future. He stressed the fact that the Secretary’s visit would enhance bilateral relations, particularly in security related ones. His statements in the press together with two important visits in recent times, that of Under Secretary Wendy Sherman and Assistant Secretary Shapiro, should have given gave some hint of something important was coming. During the visit of the Assistant Secretary, the media was kept out totally. The only news that filtered to the media, courtesy the US Embassy in Dhaka was that US was seeking increased cooperation with Bangladesh on security. 

In fact, whatever little has come to the media in recent days out of these developments hinted that US had offered to hold with Bangladesh annual consultations on security related issues. US’ interest in Bangladesh in security related issues is somewhat intriguing. The USA played a major role during the Caretaker Government and ensured that the military handed power to an elected government. Earlier during the BNP term, the USA was disappointed at the indulgence of the BNP with elements like Bangla Bhai in particular and its alliance with the fundamentalist Jamat in general.  

The US must therefore have been greatly relieved at the AL’s zero commitment to terrorism. Nevertheless meantime the parameters within which US had earlier perceived terrorism and threat in South Asia changed.  First, the killing of Osama Ben Laden and top Al Qaeda leadership has encouraged the US to bring its war on terror to an end in Afghanistan from where it is withdrawing combat troops earlier than the 2014 deadline that the Obama administration had set initially. Second, the US has realized that its fear of so-called Islamic terrorism in Bangladesh has been exaggerated. Finally, in the context of US’ strategic partnership with India, the US administration has left security concerns in our region to the Indians. It is no longer interested to deal with its security concerns directly with countries such as Bangladesh and would like India to deal with these instead. 

Therefore the sudden interest of the US in security related issues should raise questions about intent. For those focusing on Bangladesh-US relations, Grameen Bank has dominated Bangladesh-US relations in recent times. The perception in Bangladesh is that the US Government in general and Secretary Clinton in particular have taken offense because the Bangladesh Government turned down a simple request to give Noble Laureate Dr.  Mohammed Yunus an honourable exit. Instead, he has not only been removed from GB; he has been accused as a “blood sucker” of the poor and corrupt. In fact, only last week, the Finance Minister has said that 54 Grameen Bank institutions are being investigated for wrong doing. 

It would therefore be unrealistic and wishful to expect that the US Secretary would be coming to make the Bangladesh Government happy. Therefore there must be some other reason for which Hillary Clinton is coming to Dhaka. That reason has to be security but not the way one would like to accept from the Bangladesh perspective. 

The reason for US’ sudden focus for security cooperation with Bangladesh is in geopolitics. The US and India are now in strategic partnership in the global perspective. The main objective of the partnership is to contain China’s expansion in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The US-Myanmar relations have also turned a full circle with US now in the process of sending its Ambassador to Myanmar after many decades.  Myanmar is now willing to change its policy for greater interaction with the West. Myanmar-India relations are also getting thicker with the former also now trying to move away from China. In the emerging security scenario, Bangladesh is emerging as the bridge for extending US-India influence towards Southeast Asia  in the physical sense. 

Secretary Clinton  may therefore be setting aside her personal feelings for   Bangladesh and its Prime Minister for a greater objective of global significance. Going by what the US Ambassador has been saying lately on Bangladesh’s politics, the US appears to be worried at the way domestic politics is going from bad to worse. For their global strategy, both USA and India would need a stable government in Bangladesh.  

Therefore it may not be totally a matter of coincidence that Pranab Mukherjee is also going to be in Dhaka during the Secretary’s visit. He is well known for his  influence on Sheikh Hasina. The US, having dealt with Sheikh Hasina, may not be sure that she would respond to US security needs the way it wants. Since US interests are also Indian interests in the context of security in the region and in Southeast Asia, Pranab Mukherjee may prove to be handy in getting Bangladesh to agree to whatever the US has to offer. 

Those in charge of foreign policy of Bangladesh should consider the fact that if offered to join the US-India security axis, it would be placing the country in a camp opposite to China. The US has historically been known to drop a country as hot potatoes after befriending it based on its self interests. Pakistan stands out as a prime example to get the point. India on its part, except for 1971, has not shown any positive interest in Bangladesh except pursuing at its own interests. China on its part has been a much more dependable ally. It is a tough choice, one that would need a government that has the nation behind it, to make the correct choice. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Bangladesh now. 

The US should therefore take Bangladesh’s current political situation into consideration and instead of pushing for a security deal with the present government in a hurry, encourage it to resolve the issue of the Caretaker Government so that Bangladesh’s political instability would end. In such a move, the US could take the Indians on board. Only a politically stable Bangladesh would be able to give the type of security cooperation that the US expects. Without assuring that, a security deal whether transparent or otherwise, would inject more instability and push Bangladesh closer to a failed state.

As for the Government of Bangladesh, after the initial state of diplomatic numbness, it has expressed the desire to sign the Trade and Investment Cooperation Agreement (TICFA) not knowing what to except. The Prime Minister on her part came out with a belated reaction to the visit, stating that Bangladesh expects duty free access of its goods to USA. Having annoyed the US for  unbelievable reasons, it has failed to react rationally for an event that should otherwise be  a very positive input for its governance in general and its foreign policy needs in particular. 

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt.

NO LESSON FROM HISTORY

Ruling party brings hartal back

Hoiday, May 4, 2012

M. Serajul Islam

 

A senior journalist who was once elected to the parliament on an Awami League ticket was asked to comment on the arrests and cases against the BNP leaders on a TV Talk Show recently. He said a few things that are worth noting seriously. He categorically dismissed any political benefit to the ruling party out of these arrests and cases. 

Instead, he said that the arrests and cases against the BNP would only strengthen the opposition. The BNP, according to him, was down and out after losing the last elections very badly. It has been the Awami League that has helped the BNP to stand on its two feet by pursuing it relentlessly without trying to deal with it politically. With every move to deal with the BNP like it was out to end it as a political party, it has succeeded in making it stronger. He said, courtesy largely the AL, the BNP is at present strong enough to challenge the ruling party!

The senior journalist said something that was very devastating for the ruling party’s claim as the party that led the movement for liberation of Bangladesh and democracy in the country. To him, what the AL is doing now is exactly what the Pakistani regime had done in East Pakistan in the 1960s. By implicating the AL and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in false cases aimed at harassment, the Pakistani military regime only helped strengthen the party and make Sheikh Mujib the unquestioned leader of the democratic movement in East Pakistan that in turn became our war of liberation.

Quite evidently, the ruling party is not aware of what it is doing.  It is failing to realize that its actions are bringing the BNP into public contention instead of breaking it apart. The State Minister of Home tried to appear convincing when he said in the media that action against the BNP leaders have been initiated because their call for hartal resulted in the damages to property and death of a driver when a bus in which he was sleeping was torched the same way past regimes rationalized their actions to suppress democratic opposition.

Minister on hartal

The State Minister’s stand would have convinced the public if only it was taken out of the context of the history of hartals in Bangladesh. It is the AL has played a dominant role in using hartal against the government where the BNP does not even come close.  The State Minister for Home must have forgotten about the AL’s role in establishing hartal in our politics. During the two terms of the BNP, his party had organized hundreds of days of hartal. There were extensive damages to property and deaths during these hartals. The BNP also used hartal during the last term of the AL that also resulted in damages to property and deaths. On balance however the AL has used hartal against the Government much more than the BNP and hence responsible for more damages and deaths.

In this present term of the AL, the people had started to hope that hartal would become history because the BNP took serious note of extreme public apathy for this evil political strategy.  It is the AL that had argued in favour of hartal very strongly as a political strategy for achieving democracy where the BNP has been a follower. In fact, till the Cholo Cholo Dhaka Cholo call of the BNP on March 12 that was a democratic movement against the government, the BNP had avoided hartal in deference to the public mood.

The BNP had resisted the temptation of falling back on hartal to make governance difficult for the government in the face of grave provocations. The AL led government  used the arm of the law to pursue the opposition leaders immediately upon assuming power where many were spending as much time running to the court as pursuing active politics. The AL also used extra judicial killing against its political opponents that the BNP had introduced while in power against hardened criminals. 

Not satisfied with filing cases and the extra judicial killings to deal with the opposition, the government surreptitiously introduced something no one would have imagined in a nightmare. They simply started making political opponents disappear. In the face of opposition uproar against these disappearances, the law enforcing and security agencies simply refused to acknowledge any involvement. In the meantime, such cases began to pile up. 

Strategy of disappearance

According to Odhikar, a human rights organization in Bangladesh over 50 people have disappeared since 2010 leaving the people convinced that the law enforcing agencies were behind these disappearances as almost all the cases involved someone opposing the government in one way or another. A chill came down those in the opposition camp because they were not prepared to deal with something that one read only in the context of dictatorial regimes like Pinochet of Chile.

The disappearance of BNP leader of Sylhet and a former lawmaker Ilyas Ali acted as the catalyst to bring this dangerous issue of disappearance to the top of the political agenda. The former lawmaker simply disappeared with his driver. As the opposition cried out foul, the ruling party responded with ridicule. The Prime Minister’s response was that the BNP had hid Ilyas Ali to make a political issue out of it. The BNP countered and blamed RAB for the disappearance.  The EU expressed concern and communicated it to the Government. Some US Congressmen also expressed concern. Human Rights Watch also voiced its deep concern and has asked for an independent inquiry. The news of the disappearance of Ilyas Ali found exposure in the media around the world. In the country, the news of the disappearance and the consequences of it cast a pall of gloom all over. The BNP’s demand to find Ilyas Ali and concerns everywhere failed to move the Government that tried to deal with it in an unbelievably casual manner.

The BNP was thus left with no alternative but to go for hartal albeit tentatively not knowing how the people would react. At first, it started with a one day hartal and then extended it for two more days at the stretch. Not surprisingly, there was wide public approval for the hartal on the first day as the people in general felt that the opposition had no alternative to make an insensitive government listen. The second and the third days of the first call of hartal also were observed although there was sporadic violence on the subsequent days. Still the government refused to accept responsibility or do anything to help find Ilyas Ali.

The BNP’s call of hartal for another two days came after the Government refused to budge to its ultimatum to find Ilyas Ali by 28th April. The second round of hartal saw more sporadic violence. Nevertheless the second round of hartal was also observed successfully from the opposition’s point of view.  Meanwhile, the Home Minister and the LGRD Minister made statements in the media that showed some signs that the Government was willing to make efforts to find Ilyas Ali. Both said their objective was to find Ilyas alive that led to public speculation that some individuals in the Government must have knowledge about Ilyas Ali’s disappearance.

Govt takes hard line

However, other authorities in the Government were not willing to accede anything to the opposition on the Ilyas Ali issue. Instead they want to meet the BNP head on with a hard line that the State Minister for Home has underscored in justifying the arrest of Ruhul Kabir Rizvi and the cases against the BNP leaders. In the midst of the fluctuating stance of the Government, President HM Ershad’s statement that people get murdered when they stay at home (the case of the unsolved murders of the journalist couple and the Saudi diplomat) and disappearance (Ilyas Ali and others) has highlighted the untenable law and order situation in the country and the general fear about the fast sliding political order.

The Government nevertheless now appears to have opted to attack the opposition to get out of the mess into which it has landed itself by its single minded pursuance to hound the opposition in the same mindset as was shown by the past undemocratic regimes in our history. The senior journalist stated unequivocally that the only result of such a course of action would be a simple case of history repeating itself. Past efforts to deal with political problems by force have all failed. He felt that the present course that the AL has charted for itself would also meet the same fate.

The senior journalist was also asked whether the case of Ilyas Ali’s disappearance was stage managed by the ruling party to contain the ill impact of railway gate and to divert growing support of the people for the next general elections under a caretaker government. His response was one spoken out of wisdom. He said that the disappearance of Ilyas Ali would add to the pile of negatives against the ruling party while doing nothing to divert the attention of the pubic either from the issue of the CG or railway gate. In fact, with failure to deal with the Ilyas Ali case democratically, the ruling party would slide further into the political quicksand in which it is stuck now unless it deals with the issue not with the Pakistani military’s mindset but with a democratic one.

Recently, the Prime Minister asked senior citizens to advise her on correct way of governance. She said this while addressing a forum that was felicitating her for Bangladesh’s victory on the maritime boundary demarcation case.  An economist known for his leanings towards the ruling party lamented in a talk show that the news of this   great victory of Bangladesh has not registered among the people that should have given the ruling party great political mileage in its present predicament.  In another forum, the Prime Minister asked her party members to work hard to get re-elected to complete the social, political and economic agenda that the ruling party has initiated. It is heartening to see that the Prime Minister has sought advice and feels that her party would have to work hard for re-election.

History repeats itself!

Recent events have underscored that the Prime Minister indeed needs advice and that her party would also have to work hard for re-election. However she should seek advice not from those who gather to felicitate her with sycophantic zeal but from those who support her party as one established by the Father of the Nation and have now shown the courage to be critical of the way she has been running the government like the senior journalist on the TV talk show.  There are many like this senior journalist and their number is growing. She should not be seeking advice from those who gather to felicitate her for they would never tell her the hard truth.

The Prime Minister must realize for her sake, her party and the country that any other way to deal with the opposition other than the democratic path would be disastrous. History should be her guide to realize this. The BNP must be given the space to act in the democratic way for which its concerns about Ilyas Ali and others who are disappearing into thin air, individuals who are mostly its political opponents, must be taken seriously and not to be ridiculed. The government must make sincere efforts to trace those behind the disappearances, whether in government or elsewhere, and punish them. Most of all, the BNP’s demand for the next elections under an agreed system, called by the senior journalist as the “mother of all problems “, must  be discussed with it and resolved so that  it would participate.

The people are, as the State Minister for Home has said, firmly and unequivocally against hartal. However, they are also politically conscious and cannot blame the BNP entirely for resorting to hartal for which the Government must bear the major responsibility for not providing any democratic alternative. Even on the fifth day of the hartal, 63% respondents to an electronic poll run by a leading Dhaka English daily favoured the BNP’s call for hartal. This should alert the government that by its un-democratic actions, it is not just helping the BNP become strong politically, it is unfortunately bringing back hartal from the ICU where it was just waiting for the life support system to be unplugged.

-------------------------

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan

On visit of Hillary Clinton

Daily Sun, May 2, 2012

M. Serajul Islam

At a private discussion among friends, the question that we all asked one another was why the US Secretary of State was visiting Bangladesh.  Like the story of the seven blind men looking at the elephant, each one of us had a view that differed from the other. 

So far for such an important visit, the only one who is upbeat is the    US Ambassador who might be knowing something that neither the government nor the opposition seems to know. It is not that US Secretary of State visits Bangladesh regularly. In fact, the last visit of a US Secretary of State to Dhaka was that of George P Schultz in the era of President Ershad. 

Furthermore, the present US Secretary of State is someone who in terms of influence she exercises in US politics and the international political scene is extraordinarily powerful. For such a powerful individual to land in Dhaka practically without any notice is something that begs explanation. In the case of Hillary Clinton, the only issue that anyone in Bangladesh can think of the cuff to explain the visit is the case of Dr. Mohammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in which she took a great interest.  

The way the Bangladesh Government spurned the request of Hillary Clinton and President Obama for an honourable exit to Dr. Yunus made a lot of people speculate that the US Government is very unhappy with the present government of Bangladesh. Many have speculated that she is so angry that she has used her influence to stop the World Bank from funding the Padma Bridge to get back at the Prime Minister and the Bangladesh Government.  

The surprise and unpreparedness of the Bangladesh Government was amply reflected by its reaction or the lack of it to the visit. Normally for such an important visit, the Government should have reacted very enthusiastically. The reasons are obvious. The US has the power to turn Bangladesh into a middle income country quicker than the ruling party expects. It is the biggest market for our RMG exports that have given Bangladesh a good measure of economic success already. 

Bangladesh now has the ability of competing with the best in the important RMG sector globally. A little support from the US for more market access of its RMG products could have a dramatic impact on our economic development. Then there is the US’ influence over the international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF; institutions that hold keys to our accelerated economic development. At a time when the ruling party is literally caught in political quicksand over its failure to deal with a host of domestic issues, the visit could have been  used  as a heaven sent opportunity to gain a great deal of political mileage.. 

Instead, in the days following the news that Hillary Clinton was coming to Dhaka, the Government did not come out with any reaction at all except matter of fact statements from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Government failed to show any enthusiasm for the visit. Instead, it seemed to be in a state of shock that she was coming to Dhaka, perhaps not knowing what to expect.  

The last occasion that someone of this government met Hillary Clinton was when Foreign Minister Dipu Moni met her at her office at the State Department a few months ago. When she returned home, she did not show any signs of having had a great visit. In fact, many speculated in the media and in private that in the official discussions, the US Secretary was curt and had communicated her personal displeasure and that of the US Government for the manner that Bangladesh Prime Minister had treated the request on Dr. Yunus and Grameen Bank.  

There is no reason to believe that the US administration has allowed the GB issue to be forgotten. Every official visitor from Washington to Dhaka following Dr. Yunus’ unceremonious departure from GB has made it a point to visit GB and raise US’ concern about what happens to the institution. When the US Under-Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Dhaka last month, she too took a trip to Manikgang to visit a GB institution, no doubt underscoring for the Bangladesh Government that the US administration has not forgotten what the Government of Bangladesh did over the institution in the context of Bangladesh-US relations.  

Therefore one can understand the diplomatic inertia or numbness or perhaps a sense of fear of the unexpected on the part of the Bangladesh Government in reacting to the Secretary’s visit. But then a US Secretary of State does not undertake an overseas visit without a reason. Therefore, in this instance too there must be a good reason. In the discussion among the friends with which I started the piece, we tried to find that reason. One of us pointed out that the Indian Finance Minister would also be in Dhaka at the same time. He did not think this is a coincidence. 

Another friend referred to the very recent visit of the Assistant Secretary for Security and Military Affairs to Dhaka. This reference had all of us thinking, particularly in the context of the offer that the US had made at the meeting for annual dialogue between the two countries on security matters. The US Ambassador in Dhaka in press meeting after the visit of the Assistant Secretary has also harped upon security and security related cooperation between USA and Bangladesh.

We concluded from these issues in our discussion that the Secretary is coming to Dhaka with security on top of her agenda; in fact we thought that this would be her only agenda item. In recent times, the US and India have entered into a strategic partnership to contain China’s expanding influence in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Bangladesh’s geopolitical location makes it desirable from the security interests of the US-India axis to take Bangladesh on board. In Myanmar, the US is making inroads diplomatically and India, strengthening its influence. At the same time, Myanmar is starting to distance itself from China. These developments suggest that in the emerging strategic interests of the US and India, Bangladesh has become important. 

In getting Bangladesh to agree to be a part of the US-India security strategy against China, the US could throw some incentives. Even a review of the Padma Bridge funding by the World Bank could be on the cards. Already, the two countries are preparing a draft of the Trade and Investment Cooperation Agreement (TICFA) that could possibly be signed during the Secretary’s visit. 

If indeed the Secretary is coming with the security agenda and would be willing to provide incentives, she would be visiting Dhaka at a very inopportune time. Politically the ruling party is in a tight corner with a list of serious mistakes. India has also lost its credibility across the board. Therefore the Secretary would be making a serious mistake to encourage the Bangladesh Government to sign a security agreement against China with India on board. It would push Bangladesh closer to the edge from becoming a failed state. 

Instead the Secretary would be doing the US-Bangladesh relations a great favour instead if she would encourage the Bangladesh Government to hold the next elections in a manner where the opposition would participate. She could use the well acknowledged influence of India in general and Pranab Mukherjee in particular over Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for achieving this objective.  

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan.

Dear Visitors to the Blog

Last Wednesday, the 25th of April, I was in a panel together with Dr. Mizanur Rahman Shelly and Dr. Amena Mohsin in the VOA programme "Hello Washington". If you are interested to listen to the discussion programme that was on US-Bangladesh security relations, please visit the following link.

    http://www.voanews.com/bangla/news/25apr12-hw-aa-us-security-148940485.html

Thanks.

Ambassador M. Serajul Islam

Friendly India fences Bangladesh

Daily Sun

April 28, 2012

M. Serajul Islam

By the end of this year, India will complete fencing the 4053 km border with Bangladesh that it started 25 years ago. India started building the fence to stop Bangladeshis in large numbers from illegally migrating to India. At various times, India has stated that 10 to 20 million Bangladeshis were illegally living in India, claims that Bangladesh has dismissed consistently as exaggerated and ill motivated. During the tenure of the BJP, there was also the talk of a “push-in” or sending these alleged Bangladeshis across the border forcibly! 

The present government in New Delhi however has not raised the issue of so-called illegal Bangladeshis. Nevertheless, it continued to complete the fence. The present government of Bangladesh on its part has not considered it necessary to question Indian about the fence. In fact, it has gone out of the way to please India while ignoring the fact that the Indians have just not been completing the fence; in places they have been strengthening it as well. At the lowest point, the fence is “four metres and floodlit, with menacing spools of razor at its base and top “. 

The Indians have also turned the Bangladesh-India border as one that does not even indicate that the two countries have reasonably friendly bilateral relations. In fact, the hints are all to the contrary. Unknown to the rest of the world and amidst strange efforts of the present governments in New Delhi and Dhaka to push it under the carpet, the fence is openly referred by people living in the border on the Bangladesh side as “Berlin Wall of Asia.”

It is just not the name that is reprehensible for Bangladeshis. It is the treatment that people living there are subjected to by the Border Security Forces of India that guards the barbed wire fence that is more reprehensible. Leading newspapers of the world like the New York Times, London’s Economist, etc have highlighted the unfortunate plights of the Bangladeshis, although such reports have so far not attracted serious attention of the international community that it deserves. 

In a recent article in The Age, a leading Australian newspaper, its reporter has filed a report based on his visit to the Bangladesh-India border. He interviewed the BSF and researched about the unfortunate plight and predicament of Bangladesh and Bangladeshis living on Bangladesh-India border. The report was headlined “Indian border force cross the lines” that pointed an accusing finger at India on a number of counts. 

The reporter Ben Doherty focused on the nature of the fence and the way it is guarded. He felt such a fence could have made sense on India-Pakistan and India-China borders but not Bangladesh-India border. He highlighted the deaths of mainly Bangladeshis at the hands of the BSF to underscore massive human rights violations. He interviewed human rights organizations in both India and Bangladesh to come to this conclusion. Indian HR organization Mausam’s General Secretary told him that BSF was killing Bangladeshis and Indians with impunity “because they are never charged with any punishment.” 

The Indians have now introduced a new element to rationalize the fence. They feel that with the adverse impact of climate change in Bangladesh, alleged mass migration of Bangladeshis to India would increase in the future.  In making their assertions on the fence, the Indians have never addressed the issue as a responsible power. Indian governments have simply quoted an unbelievable number off the cuff without ever being able to give Bangladesh even a partial list of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants it claims to be in India. 

In claiming such an unbelievable number, the Indians have included all Bengali speaking people found outside West Bengal as Bangladeshis, forgetting that there are 130 million people of Paschim Bangla who also speak Bangla. The way the issue was projected when it blew into a major conflict during the BJP tenure underpinned an anti-Bangladesh and anti-Muslim bias in the Indian claim. If indeed there were a number of illegal Bangladeshis closer to what the Indians claims, then it would have been reflected in reports of independent international bodies and organizations that study and report on migration. 

International reporters like Doherty and others who have written have all been critical of India for first, building physical barriers between nations that have been condemned into the garbage of history, and second, for the untenable reasons that India has put forward to build the “Berlin Wall of Asia.” They have all also unequivocally condemned the BSF for its wanton violation of HR and the Indian Government for failing to restrain its trigger happy BSF. 

It is an irony that India is caging Bangladesh when the AL led Government is going out of its way to be friendly to India. In fact, the ruling party is now facing a serious political situation because of India’s failure to reciprocate after Bangladesh had unilaterally given India full cooperation on its security concerns and a trial run of land transit.  The border fence and the atrocities of the BSF are going to be additional factors against the AL in the next general elections. 

These factors apart, the fence adds to the negative image that Bangladesh has historically suffered ever since that insensitive statement of Henry Kissinger that  an independent Bangladesh would become an “international basket case”. Bangladesh has come a long way since that remark. Today it shows all the positive signs of becoming a middle income country. Seven million Bangladeshis live abroad legally and collectively remit US$ 12 billion a year with a similar figure lost because of the Hundi operators or illegal money operators with network in India. 

 The opportunity of such a large number of Bangladeshis to serve abroad legally and the significant strides that Bangladesh has made in economic and social development raises serious doubt on the Indian claim of illegal mass migration. Indian Noble Laureate Amarta Sen has said that on key social and economic indicators of growth, Bangladesh is ahead even of India in South Asia. 

For Bangladesh, the fence when completed and publicized around the world would become be a major hurdle in projecting the image it needs to attract foreign investment. Ironically it is India that has held out the promise to the present government in Bangladesh that if it gave it land transit, it would help make Bangladesh the regional hub of connectivity. A country that offers such promise for Bangladesh is building and strengthening the “Berlin Wall of Asia” because it believes that Bangladeshis would migrate in masses to India because of economic depravity and adverse impact of climate change! There is a serious contradiction in what India promises for Bangladesh with the connectivity hub and what it is doing with the fence. 

It is a tragedy that those in charge of our relations with India do not see through this contradiction and muster the courage to question India on the fence when it has the potential to give Bangladesh an image that would be disastrous for the country’s future. As for more contradiction, the country that accepted 10 million refugees from Bangladesh in 1971 is now fencing the same country so that they would not be able to flee to avoid death and depravation due to the adverse effects of climate change! 

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan

On resignation of Ministers and the constitution

As I see It Column

The Independent

April 27, 2012

M. Serajul Islam

During President Ershad’s tenure, there was a Law Secretary who used to pride himself that he could interpret any of the Government’s decisions as constitutionally correct given enough of coco cola to drink and a little time to think. The Secretary was addicted to the drink! He always found the legal reasons to defend the Government on constitutional issues. As long as HM Ershad was in power, most of the constitutional experts of the time did not raise commotions over his constitutional interpretations. 

In fact, till the end of the last term of the BNP, constitutional issues were more or less academic.  The AL, while in the opposition and fighting the last BNP government on the issue of the Chief Adviser of the CG, tried and succeeded in using the constitutional provision on the appointment of the CA to put a spanner on the government that ended by bringing the emergency and the army to assume power.  

On assuming power, the AL continued to uphold the importance of the constitution to bring changes aimed at re-establishing the constitution of 1972 and thereby, the democratic and secular character of Bangladesh. For a while, people who were not AL supporters and neutral thought that the AL’s faith in constitution was well intentioned. In particular, they welcomed the re-introduction of the secular character of the Constitution.  

Unfortunately, those who welcomed the AL’s faith in the constitution soon found that it was using that faith more in the interest of the party than the country. That was evident when it went to the Court for ending the 13^th amendment that had established the CG system. The Court ended the CG system but also recommended that given the nature of politics in the country, the CG system should be retained for 2 more national elections. 

The AL did not wait for the Court to write its full judgment. Instead, it went ahead and used its parliamentary majority to end the CG system for good where the whole process took less than 4 minutes to complete! That exposed the fact that the AL’s respect for the Constitution was intended more for furthering its political interests. It has now placed before the country a political problem that threatens to push it to the edge.  

In fact, the AL has shown the same mindset that President Ershad had shown by its acts related to the constitution. That mindset was evident in the Railway gate scandal concerning Suranjit Sen Gupta. When SSG addressed a press conference and resigned as the Minister for Railways the evening after meeting the Prime Minster, everybody took it for granted that he was not just out of the Railway Ministry but also out of the Cabinet. There was no reason for anyone to think anything to the contrary. There was a national outcry to sack him. Such a demand came from senior leaders of his party. The BNP of course wanted his ouster. 

The Prime Minister herself was never happy with SSG. He was a leading reformist in the party who had taken a stand that was designed to clip her wings when she was incarcerated under the CG. Thus when she became the Prime Minister, she clipped the wings of the reformists instead.  SSG was able to find his way to the Cabinet after being in the wilderness for nearly 3 years as he had become an embarrassment to the party by his criticisms that were directed even at the Prime Minister. Thus when SSG dug his own hole with Railway Gate, the Prime Minister firmly showed him the door. The media felt not the slightest doubt that he was out of the cabinet. 

His resurrection thus surprised everybody; a section openly mentioned that he owed his resurrection to the influence exercised upon the Prime Minister by a foreign power.  In addition, leading lawyers injected further controversy into the issue. They said that SSG would need to take a fresh oath as a Minister without portfolio to be in the cabinet that he has not done. Hence they concluded that his appointment as Minister with portfolio was unconstitutional.  

That incensed the Prime Minister. She stated that a Minister remained a Minister till she recommended to the President to accept the resignation. As she had not accepted SSG’s resignation as Minister of Railways, he did not cease to be a Minister and hence when he was made the Minister without portfolio, there was no need for a fresh oath. The same interpretation was used to maintain that Sohel Taj who had resigned as Minister for Home nearly 3 years ago was still a Minister although in this period he never attended his office! 

In using the constitution to answer the critics, the Prime Minister   stated that our Constitution does not give a minister the right to resign from the Cabinet!! Without going to the constitutional debate over the issue, the Prime Minister’s interpretation would make sense only under a dictatorship. A simple reading of Article 58 (1) nevertheless makes it unmistakably clear that SSG’s resignation was constitutionally in order; the Prime Minister had no right to deny him the right to resign and his appointment as Minister without portfolio was a new appointment. The critics were right that SSG’s appointment as a minister without portfolio was a fresh appointment and he was holding the post illegally with a fresh oath.  

The debate over the resignations and the constitution is nevertheless a waste of time. The constitution has always been interpreted in our history by those in power mainly to justify their actions.  In the case of SSG and Sohel Taj, the constitution has been used to deny the ministers their fundamental right to decide whether or not to remain in the government. The Prime Minister interpreted the constitutional provision incorrectly by assuming  a power that the constitution does not give her. Those advising the Prime Minister have acted in the same manner as the Law Secretary who never disappointed President HM Ershad in finding constitutional answers to his actions, a lot of which were debatable. 

Therefore those debating the issue would be using their time better if they tried to find out the real reason for resurrection of SSG as a Minister without portfolio. It does not make sense why the ruling party would waste the advantages it had regained when SSG resigned, by resurrecting him. Therefore there must be a mysterious reason to make him a minister again. It would be worth finding that reason.  

Meanwhile, Sohel Taj highlighted the futility of fighting the Prime Minister’s mindset and her interpretation of the constitution. He thus resigned from the Parliament to get beyond the reach of the Prime Minister to force him to remain a minister. Like Kadambini 36in Tagore’s famous short story who plunged into the well and died to prove she was dead, Sohel Taj resigned from Parliament to prove that he ceased to be a minister! 

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt

The SSG drama: Victory for democracy or corruption?

Holiday

April 26, 2012

M. Serajul Islam

In the case concerning the Minister for Railways, many miscalculated the outcome. Analysts of political events had spoken and written that Suranjit Sen Gupta would retain his post and the hue and cry over the taka 7 million found in the car of his APS when he was coming to his residence close to midnight would die down like similar incidents in the past. They based their prediction on the assumption that the Prime Minister would not sack the Minister, the allegations against him notwithstanding, because that would give political victory to the Opposition. 

When the Minister resigned, everybody thought that he was not just out of the Ministry of Railways but out of the Cabinet as well. There was of course no reason to believe to the contrary. The fact that the Minister was later retained in the Cabinet was a mystery yet to be answered. The members of the civil society were the first to be fooled into the belief that the Minister was out of the Cabinet and ended embarrassing themselves. They went ahead and congratulated the Prime Minister for forcing the Minister out and felicitated the Minister for his courage and his commitment for democracy for deciding to resign. 

The Chairman of the Human Rights Commission also did not waste time to welcome the Prime Minister’s decision to encourage the Minister to resign and the Minister for listening to the Prime Minister as a victory for democracy. One just wonders what human rights issue was involved in the resignation to have encouraged him to come to the media and give the statement he gave. The Ministers of the Government warmly felicitated their leader for her courage, her wisdom and political vision in the service of democracy and called the Minister’s resignation a “historical” event! 

The decision of the Prime Minister to keep the Minister in the Cabinet after raising the optimism that he was in fact sacked showed in bad light those in the civil society who had hurriedly gone ahead to congratulate the Prime Minister and the Minister. In fact, the Prime Minister did nothing unpredictable for she was not prepared to let it appear that she had given to the demand of the Opposition. She just removed the Minister from his post as she had done with the former Minister for Communications, only this time she reacted quickly to give the sense that she was sacking the Minister. 

Nevertheless, if it was just the fact that she was retaining SSG in the Cabinet so as not to give in to the demand of the Opposition, she ended giving the impression  that her claim of zero tolerance on corruption was a mere lip service to the issue. The tall claims made by her Ministers and members of the civil society that the resignation was a victory for democracy was made laughable when the Minister was retained in the cabinet as a Minister without portfolio. In particular, those Ministers who had hailed SSG’s resignation as “historical” should now know what historical stupidity they made by their hurried claim. 

In retrospect, SSG committed more blunders than other Ministers against whom charges of corruption were brought in the past.   He intervened with the Border Guards and the Police on behalf of his APS and senior officials of his Ministry after they were apprehended with Taka 7 million in their car. The fact that they were coming with it to his residence at close to midnight after picking the money from a suburb in the city made the case look more suspicious. If he knew that there was that amount of money in the car when he intervened with the authorities, he made a serious error of judgment. For a politician who took such immense pleasure to rub his self-acclaimed expertise in legal and constitutional issues on the opposition, that act, even unintentional, was unpardonable. 

Unfortunately for the Minister, other facts suggested that he was not really unaware of what he was doing. If indeed there was any need to intervene with the authorities on behalf of the Ministry’s officials on questions of identity, a Minister would normally leave such a matter to his Private Secretary or someone else in his Ministry‘. By intervening himself, the Minister showed a personal interest in the case. Further, in a Ministry’s staff, an APS of the Minister is one who is closest to the Minister. A Minister has the right and all Ministers use it to appoint someone who looks after his personal affairs to such a post. In fact, one appointed to the post of an APS need not even be a serving civil servant at the point of being named to the post. 

The Minister’s first acts proved his knowledge of what those apprehended were up to. The driver of the car as the whistle blower gave the public the reason to doubt the Minister’s innocence. The presence of Yusuf Ali Mridha in the car was another very serious incriminating evidence of corruption. He has since been accused by the employees’ association of the Railway Ministry as being the leader of money for job  racket in the Ministry that has so far netted huge amounts of money from the 7000 posts on offer in the Ministry.

Additional facts emerged from family sources that did not help the Minister in fighting the quicksand to which he fell. His son, just couple of days before the incident later named in the media as Railway Gate, had paid Taka 5 crores up front as  fee for a telecommunications license he was granted by the Bangladesh Telecommunications Board. The Minister’s son was working in an internet provider for a monthly salary of Taka 50,000 till only recently. At the same time, the Minister was scheduled to open his own mall, the Sen Mall in Sunamgang that was built at costs running into huge sums of money. The circumstantial evidence both connected and unconnected to Railway Gate  all piled up to leave the people convinced that the Minister was far from being the epitome of honesty and integrity that he tried to project about himself and his politics.  

The Minister’s 50 years of politics did not prepare him for dealing with the situation that confronted him. He made a series of other silly mistakes to complicate his predicament. He formed two committees, one under his Private Secretary and another under a Joint Secretary in his Ministry for clearing the allegations. He then suspended his APS and then sacked him not knowing what was correct or what would be acceptable to the public. He sent the Ministry’s officials on leave at first and then suspended them. Later he formed a committee to investigate into the whole incident at a senior level.

In the midst of these series of confused behaviour, he ridiculed a BNP lady MP who had asked for a judicial inquiry, calling her a novice who was unaware about the serious business of governance. In hindsight he ended being the novice himself for if he had accepted her demand and asked for a judicial inquiry instead of trying to clear himself by forming committees under officials controlled by him, he would have given an impression of honest intent to the public.

At the height of crisis, he once hinted that if the allegations against him were proven he would resign. He then somersaulted and declined to do so, loudly claiming that none of the charges were against him and therefore he was under no compulsions, under issues of democracy or ministerial responsibility or otherwise, to resign. During the crisis, the opposition made him nervous by loudly demanding his resignation and for probe in to the allegations of corruption.

He could perhaps have faced those demands of the opposition if he had any support forthcoming from his own party. Senior members of his party led by former Home Minister Mohammad Nasim joined voice with the Opposition and asked him to take responsibility for his actions, in other words asked him to resign. In fact Mohammad Nasim’s comment that the Railway Bhavan would not be allowed to become the Hawa Bhavan hurled at the Minister much more serious accusation of corruption than what the opposition could articulate.

When the Prime Minister returned from Turkey and consulted her close aides on the incident, the Minister’s goose was more than well cooked. The Minister was given the post only recently after he was by-passed three years ago because he had annoyed the Prime Minister as a reformist during the period of the last caretaker government. He was included eventually after he had become an embarrassment for the Prime Minister and the ruling party with his criticisms aimed at just not the government but also at the Prime Minister and her family. The Minister, by what he did or failed to do with Railway Gate, gave the Prime Minister the opportunity to snub a colleague for whom she had no reason for compassion. 

Therefore there was no service done  to democracy nor was it intended as the members of the ruling party projected initially.  The Minister, by his actions gave the Prime Minister the opportunity for which she was waiting and she did not miss that opportunity. She did not go to the full extent of humiliating the Minister because she did not want to give the opposition any opportunity to feel that she had acted under pressure from them.   

The whole nation heaved a sigh of relief that the Prime Minister had held a colleague responsible for corruption and moved him from his post quicker than she did with the former Minister of Communications. However, they welcomed it more because they felt that the Minister more than deserved it.   Their only pleasure was that the Prime Minister  sealed the mouth of a politician who irked not just the opposition but many right thinking people by his self-righteousness and the manner in which he ridiculed his opponents on issues of corruption by placing himself on a pedestal of honesty and integrity. 

The Prime Minister would richly deserve the nation’s congratulations only when she completed the process of allegations against the Minister, his Ministry, his wealth and his son’s Taka 5 million, not forgetting from where the Taka 7 million came from and why were the culprits headed for the Minister’s house. Otherwise, her action to force the Minister to resign from his post would be a victory not for democracy but for corruption. Her decision to keep him in the Cabinet as a Minister without portfolio hinted that corruption still had a head start over democracy in winning the Railway Gate case. 

Post script: The Railway Gate had pulled down the ruling party to a new low politically given the fact that it was its promise to fight corruption with zero tolerance that had helped it win a thumping majority in the last elections. When the Prime Minister had appeared to have sacked SSG on that zero tolerance, the ruling party managed to undo a lot of the potential damage that Railway gate had done to it. With SSG now resurrected as a Minister where there was no support for him even from his party and the Prime Minister not entirely unhappy with his predicament, India is being mentioned as the power that intervened on his behalf.  

The emergence of the India factor has created more serious liabilities for the ruling party. By keeping the Minister in the cabinet, it failed to convince the people on its zero tolerance on corruption. Now with the India factor to deal with; the ruling party has a very dangerous combination at hand looking ahead into the next general elections. India’s standing in Bangladesh’s politics because of its failure to deliver on many promises it made to it is now at an all time low. 

The writer is a retired career diplomat and a former Ambassador to Japan.

India:Provincial power on rise

Daily Sun
April 22, 2012
M. Serajul Islam 

We were told by our professors in the Department of Political Science in Dhaka University back in the 1960s that India was not the perfect example of federation as the United States. India they taught us was a quasi-federation where the centre was the dominant authority and the provinces had to depend on most major issues for favour of the centre. The other difference that made the Indian centre strong at the time of independence was the fact that the centre gave powers to the provinces; in fact since independence, the centre also created some of the Indian provinces. Conversely, in US, the states came together and formed the federation and voluntarily gave it the powers they thought were necessary for the federal government.  

Things had not changed much in centre-province relations even into the 1980s. In fact, when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister of India, the centre was still powerful and dominant. Then Chief Minister of West Bengal now Paschim Bangla Jyoti Basu had called Rajiv Gandhi a second rate commercial pilot when he was yet to be the Prime Minister of India. Rajiv Gandhi did not forget that compliment. Upon becoming the Prime Minister, he made West Bengal pay for their Chief Minister’s indiscretion. 

The present Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohon Singh must be regretting every day these days that the good days of being an Indian Prime Minister vis-a-vis the provinces are over as the Chief Ministers of the once weak provinces flex their muscles to make him dance to their tunes. Not too long ago, the Paschim Bangla’s mercurial Chief Minister Mamata Banarjee not only showed her power to the Prime Minister, she embarrassed New Delhi when the agreement of the water sharing of the Teesta l with Bangladesh had to be taken off the table at literally the eleventh hour. In fact, that act of Mamata Banarjee has sent Bangladesh-India relations off track right when the two countries appeared to be headed for coming together on issues of common interests after 4 decades of conflict ridden and mutually damaging bilateral relations.  

Mamata Banarjee achieved a first in the history of centre-state relationship or federalism in India by that act. She rendered the Indian Prime Minister powerless to act on a major foreign policy issue on the plea that water is a provincial subject. Such a division of powers never stopped the centre from acting unilaterally in foreign affairs in the past. The question that a province would have the audacity of challenging the centre on a foreign policy matter was something that was totally inconceivable when the constitution was drafted and decades thereafter. 

The ability of a provincial Chief Minister like Mamata Banarjee to make the centre powerless is now visible more explicitly in India’s domestic politics where it is New Delhi that is more at the receiving end. Provincial power galore was in evidence in the recent Annual Conference of the Chief Ministers on Internal Security in New Delhi.  Chief Ministers of provinces ruled by parties in opposition at the centre and one ruled by a party that is a coalition partner of the Congress led UPA came together on the issue of the proposed National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), a  federal anti-terror organization  modeled after the US Centre of the same. They bombarded the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. Both were present at the inaugural session of the Annual Conference for designing to use the NCTC to destroy the careful balance of power in India’s federal structure that they said had been achieved painstakingly over the years.  

The Chief Ministers considered the NCTC as “federally intrusive”. They also expressed strong opposition over the Railways Protection Force and the Border Security Force Acts. They considered these Acts as instruments with which the Centre was interfering with contempt into the powers of the provinces. Narendra Modi of Gujarat articulated the mood of the provinces by stating that New Delhi was using/would use the central intelligence agencies under powers derived from these Acts and the proposed NCTC to “browbeat” the law enforcing agencies of the provinces into submission. Tamil Nadu’s J. Jayalalitha stated unequivocally that as police is a provincial subject, the powers of these establishments in the provinces “is not acceptable.”    

Biju Patnaki of Orissa joined Narendra Modi and J. Jayalalitha in the attack on the Centre. The trio in fact left the Annual Conference soon after the inaugural to meet at the Tamil Nadu Bhavan in New Delhi where they tried to further the cause of regional power over the centre. The meeting at the Tamil Nadu Bhavan was nothing short of a rebellion against the centre’s power for at the Tamil Nadu Bhavan, the trio also discussed their dislike for the centre’s way of dealing with the provinces with “utter disrespect.” 

Till end of the 1960s, when India was ruled by the Congress where the provincial interests and conflicts were represented and resolved, there was no question of any province daring the centre. Despite the problems that Indira Gandhi faced in the 1970s, the forces opposing the Congress dissipated and it again emerged as a dominant all-India party in the 1980s. It receded again in the 1990s but when the BJP emerged nationally, India showed the signs of emerging into a stable two-party democratic system in a federal structure with a strong centre. At the turn of the century and into the new millennium, that prospect also dissipated. Both Congress and BJP as national parties have today become weak and no longer capable to form a government at the centre on their own strength. That weakness in turn made the centre weak s well. 

Both parties have become dependent on the regional parties to form a central government. Before either realized, these small regional parties soon demonstrated that they also had the power to make a government fall in the centre as well. It is this power to help form a government and to make it fall that is the real reason that has changed India from a quasi federation of the past where the provinces received what they were given by the centre to a  federal system where the provinces demand and receive what they want from New Delhi. 

Nevertheless, the transformation of the Indian federation leading to a weak centre and powerful provinces is still in transition. In New Delhi, the “trio” tried to send a loud message that the days of a powerful centre is over by heralding the emergence of a “Third-Fourth Front.”. They succeeded in so far as diverting media attention from the main event that was the Annual Conference to the Tamil Nadu Bhavan from where they delivered the message of provincial power. The absence of the Chief Ministers of Paschim Bangla, UP and Bihar,  the last two leading provinces from the Hindi heartland,  whose parties together have 60 Lok Sabha seats, took a lot of sting away from the message that the trio had wanted to give India  and ensured that the “Third-Fourth Front” would be still born. Nevertheless, the powerful CMs who abstained are also advocates of provincial power with the redoubtable Mamata Banarjee one of them and stayed from the New Delhi meeting on different reasons. 

New Delhi however must have heaved a sigh of relief because the divisions among the Provinces kept them apart from delivering a united message for a weak Centre despite the recent surge of provincial power in India. This notwithstanding, the golden days of a powerful centre that could take the provinces for granted is now a matter of the past that should raise worries about India’s political future.  

The writer is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt