A citizen’s worries

As a law-abiding citizen of this country, I have worries about the future. I speak of my future, of the future of my fellow citizens, of the destiny of the generations that will succeed mine. I am concerned about the future of this People's Republic in the same way that other citizens are worried.

My worries stem from a comprehension of bad reality. That reality is the regular manifestation of a depressing pattern of tragedy – of innocent citizens, people of liberal inclinations, seeing their lives come to a sudden end at the hands of three individuals riding a single motorbike. My worry has to do not with the fact that the minister responsible for law and order has decreed a ban on three men riding one motorbike. It has everything to do with the horrible truth, which is that none of these motorbike riders, moving around in a systemic way striking down people, have been tracked down.

I am not a frightened citizen by any stretch of the imagination. Fear in these parlous circumstances is not an option. But something troubles me deep inside my soul when I am expected to bank on governmental reassurances that the assassins of our bloggers, of our publishers, of our academics, of our Hindus and Christians and now of the spouse of a brave policeman will be brought to justice. That they are not being brought to justice is the harsh truth. That no one knows who these medieval elements are or where they with alacrity spring from, is a hard fact which pierces the heart, in that notoriously wrenching way which leaves the soul dripping with melancholy, if not exactly crushed into a thousand pieces.

My worries, like the worries of my fellow Bengalis, deepen when the home minister tells us in glib manner that these killings are isolated incidents, when he informs us that conditions are normal in the country and that we are all safe. We are not safe. Conditions are not normal. When a young woman is murdered in public in a Chittagong street, when a nineteen year-old woman dies inside a cantonment and no one has any clue to the death or is unwilling to delve deeper into the tragedy, we are not safe.

My concerns, let me say again, converge around this inability of the administration to preserve and protect the lives and property of citizens. When a Hindu priest is waylaid and murdered, again by three men on a motorbike, when a Christian pastor dies for reasons he and the rest of us are not aware of, when an individual with pronounced gay proclivities is killed at his home, when temples and idols are desecrated, I am worried. We are all worried.

My worries arise not just with the murder of innocent men and women. They come, in an unavoidable way, woven around these union parishad elections we have gone through. A hundred and thirteen people, perhaps more, have died in the violence which made a mockery of the elections, which left us facing new questions on the future of political pluralism in the country. Scores upon scores of citizens have been beaten black and blue or have suffered the consequences of their own sinister behaviour. Must elections be conducted in such questionable manner? Must these elections be defined as elections? Must the right to life be sacrificed, must life mutate into death when the right to vote is the principle to be safeguarded?

I was worried when the Justice Rouf-led Election Commission pushed us all down the road to new disaster at the Magura by-election in 1994. I was appalled when Justice Aziz and his Election Commission saw nothing wrong in the names of dead men and women making it to the voters list in 2006. Today I am embarrassed that Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmed has added a new chapter to that sordid legacy by presiding over an election that was anything but an election. I am worried that he has not thought of submitting, on moral grounds, his resignation and walking away from it all. And now I am worried at thoughts of how terrible, how violent an election we may have in 2019 if this Election Commission, with its chief, remains in charge.

My worries do not cease. There are all the men and all the circumstances that do not allow me to bring a closure to my worries. When the prime minister and others in her government enlighten us with the thought that elements of the BNP-Jamaat alliance have been and are behind all these killings, I am worried, because I do not see rhetoric giving way to action. I worry when populism leaves no space for pragmatism. I am worried because as a citizen I would like to have hard evidence of the opposition engaging in such sinister activities. My worries relate to the consequences of the many sweeping statements coming our way, for sweeping statements are an attempt at an escape from reality. They uphold and reinforce a state of denial. That there are religious militants around us, that they are getting away with their criminality, that the administration is unable to get to them, are for me and for everyone like me a portent of gathering darkness.

The darkness will not lift through looking for scapegoats. Citizens do not need to be told in cavalier fashion that an Israeli hand is behind these militant assaults on life and liberty. They need to see a competent government, indeed an efficient security system at work. They have no fascination for images of ministers, of powerful men and women, making regular appearances before the media mouthing old platitudes that have been tested and have proved pointless.

I am worried that no debate goes on in parliament on these and other issues of public interest. I am concerned that lawmakers slip into being lawbreakers when they assault teachers and government officers and get away with their transgressions. It breaks the heart when the health minister fails to fulfill his promises to striking nurses, when the police disperse them through an exercise of their hard batons before the ministerial home.

My worries widen and deepen with the thought that no credible political opposition exists in the country, that those who stayed away from the last election have not comprehended yet the enormity of their folly, have not learnt any lesson but have unwittingly done everything to turn themselves into irrelevance. It worries me when a putative opposition turns into a putative semi-government, or a mix of the two, in parliament, and therefore knows not what role it is expected to play in national politics.

I worry, as so many millions of my fellow citizens do, that there are all the forces arrayed against this government we have all placed our faith in to do good for all citizens. There are the wolves lurking in the bushes to damage this government and damage all of us by extension. That is the worry. The worry is also intertwined with the depressing thought that within the corridors of power many are the men who are undermining the administration with their incompetence and so laying the country vulnerable to disaster.

Many ministers need to go. Many ministers of state and deputy ministers have turned out to be superfluities in government. They should go. There are police officers, who having set a record for bad performance, ought to be moved out and away from the centre. A large number of lawmakers must be disciplined on political ethics. All those yes-men and yes-women around the head of government are drilling holes in the armour of the administration.

Administration is indispensable. Those hangers-on are not.

I am worried about the shrinking of space for liberal politics. I worry when the nation's leading political figures fail to reach out to the country and rise to the pedestal of national leadership.

I worry. So do you. So must those in whose hands we have placed the power to do good to people all around this land. So must they who are in the stands, afraid of the future.