Nadeem Qadir writes for DOT :
Bangladesh is all set on the fast track to development amid an outcry by the sidelined opposition called the Oikkya Jote over the December 2018 elections that saw the electorate choosing a leadership that has and will deliver for a better future. A valid question I place to my foreign friends, especially fellow critics, that is it worth to shout about democracy sidelining our basic needs like food, employment and a decent life which are all linked to quality leadership and development. I tell them there is democracy around the world in its truest sense as only being able to vote cannot be the yard-stick for such a political system. For me, I steadfastly maintain, that democracy in Bangladesh means a system that gives people the basic food, clothes, employment and basic civic rights amid a development which affects the life of our people. That, I am sure, none can deny has been delivered by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the past 10 years. This has been recognised by the international community who say that Bangladesh became role models in different sectors.
I had been travelling around Bangladesh to a great extent in recent months and I was awestruck to see that everywhere something was happening to improve the lives of our people. From highways, roads, bridges, housing, monorails, flyovers and an underwater road-railway in the Karnaphuli river connecting Chittagong with Bangladesh’s south-eastern tip of Teknaf. From there Dhaka will one-day not far away be connected with China – one our major development partners.
The opening of rail and waterways to neighbouring India has already pushed development in different parts of the country. Our trusted friend India has also massively financially supported the development works taken by the Awami League government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
India’s support for building a modern Bangladesh based on the pillars with which this South Asian country was born which is visible. Starting with the Ramphal power plant close to the Sunderbans mangrove forest to other major infrastructural projects is only another example of Sheikh Hasina’s leadership in getting international support to fulfil her mission of a developed Bangladesh.
Britain, China, Russia, Japan and USA have congratulated Sheikh Hasina and pledged their continued support, saying her success in the country’s economic front and the development that took place under her leadership deserved kudos.
The Front, without a leader or a radar, is destined to be doomed as the electorate has abandoned it for its own mistakes. During Oikkya Front’s major component partner Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s rule for most of the time since the 1975 assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman it failed to deliver any kind of democracy or even undertook any meaningful steps for the country’s development. Thus it should allow the country to have the leadership that has delivered and will deliver.
If we talk about what BNP gave the country is a sad and a cruel story ranging from unprecedented corruption, polluting politics, rehabilitating Razakars or the collaborators of the Pakistani army, ruining the civil and military bureaucracy and secret killings of both civil and military opponents randomly. Most were freedom fighters or pro-independence people. One may mention here the illegal hanging of freedom fighter late Colonel Taher in kangaroo military court.
Even now its acting Chairman Tarique Rahman, self-exiled in Britain and a fugitive from law for graft as well as attempted murder of Sheikh Hasina, has shown any leadership quality and rather more of his Mafia style love for violence and killings as far as his speeches are concerned.
Thus it will be well for the Oikkya Front to join the 11th parliament which starts on 30 January and make their voice heard. It should stop complaining of every step the government makes which only proves more that it was an alliance or BNP individually, was withering away as days passed.
It should be a passenger in the high track of development under Sheikh Hasina and be a partner of something good that it has failed to deliver during its rule. Leave aside the argument of free and fair elections as we agree that it might have been luckier with a few more seats, but not enpough to form a government.
In the context of Bangladesh, the “bad habit” of tempering with results will not go away in a day. How can one forget the Magura polls under the BNP of Khaleda Zia, the jailed former prime minister.
BNP is paying the price of not joining the 2014 by binning Sheikh Hasina’s gestures of friendship and offers to be a part of the interim government. It will simply whither away if it sticks to its currenty plan to demand new elections. It is only a fool’s wish!
Freelance journalist Nadeem Qadir is a UN Dag Hammraskjold Fellow
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