Children of greater gods: Is Coco really to blame?

It is easy to blame children of gods when things are down. Take the case of Coco, Zia's youngest son who has recently been convicted of money laundering and sentenced to jail. No one thinks that the children of our gods are prisoners of the same history that made their parents divine in the first place. Our politics is not about service to the people but about staying in power. In that scheme of things rights and wrongs rarely matter. How will then gods and their children know what is wrong and what is right, when we elect them no matter what?

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When do our leaders and politicians become gods? When we learn that politics is not a participatory process where there is accountability. When we know that we shall not get anything as part of a citizenship entitlement but it will arrive only as gifts and donations and we must seek them with folded hands. Just as the gods are capricious and distribute favours only when it suits them, our political process does the same. Our politics is never a conversation but always a speech, always delivered from a pulpit, from a distance and the speechmaker always looks like a god.

It is with this religious imagery that our politics is constructed. We tend to look upon them as divine beings, bound by their own logic, beyond politics, beyond promises, beyond morality, supreme beings who like Zeus live in a world that is not ours. We treat them that way.

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How will these gods and their children know that they are subject to the same laws when we have declared them permanently innocent? No crime, no misrule of theirs ever affects us. Crimes have no impact on politics let alone elections. If the public don't punish the leaders, what can law do and what can our 'helpless' politicians do? If people tell them all the time that they can never commit any wrong, is it their fault that they also think the same? Gods or their children are not subject to laws of ordinary mortals.

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Neither Coco nor Tarique Zia ever began life wanting to be such bigwigs. When Zia was alive, they weren't exactly stars of any kind and led a life of obscurity. But the impulses of history were at work from long before propelled by the death of Zia which saw a headless-chicken panic in the BNP and pushing forward of Khaleda Zia, a family member, to party power. As the party became family-based, the rise of Tarique, the elder son, was inevitable.

Fondly called the "Crown Prince" by his followers, he swiftly rose to take charge of most matters. He is, as the "Crown Prince", the one who does decide the future of the party. His corruption charges make no difference because to his followers he is the king-in-waiting and the king can do no wrong.

But could he avoid being the "Crown Prince" in the party which looks upon him as a member of the Royal BNP Family? Like the Royal Sheikh Family?

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Coco is more of a victim as he has/had shown no inclination for power but only for commerce. In Bangladesh, it is difficult to be a businessman who is also the PM's son and not access privileges. Since our business culture resembles a private club based on connections rather than an open transparent system, what was Coco supposed to do? Behave as if his mother wasn't the prime minister? Invent new rules for doing business in Bangladesh? It is not why but how could he be different? To do something for Coco must have been a public demand to get more favours. Why blame one single man who is the son of one PM and another president for trying to make a living in a country where such deals are done all the time?

Both Tarique and Coco have behaved in ways that has led to public verdicts and that is what matters just as that doesn't matter to their supporters.

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But just as there are public verdicts of guilt by perception, there are ones of not being guilty as well. The best example of this was when Hasina and Khaleda were tried by the Fakhruddin-Moeen government on corruption charges but still it didn't tarnish their reputation. People didn't accept their guilt so they remained totally innocent by perception to their followers and totally guilty to their enemies.

Similarly, it doesn't matter who has done what or is convicted of what. The gods are always blameless so court charges are in the end meaningless. We can't accept our gods doing wrongs and of course we don't accept the existence of other gods either. It is this mentality that makes us fully support one and hate the other.

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Let us therefore remember that those who we trash today could very well be our PMs of tomorrow. In Bangladesh, we shall only have either the AL or the BNP in power and surely Tarique is all set as the next PM when the BNP era arrives. Who knows when Joy will join too for the next round of AL rule. It is all written and fated and there are little chances of something happening otherwise. Let us be respectful of those who shall rule us soon and probably in sequence. It is just that we never had or will have a say in the matters of guilt or innocence of those who rule us. And that we don't really mind that we don't.

Dear children of PMs — remember that you are blameless. We shall prove it when the voting time comes.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist and researcher