Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan ndc, psc (Retd)

The media has been looked at both with derision and awe for its capacity to influence the public mind and hold the authority to account. It has also been accused of “misinforming” the public and overplaying its role.

It was absorbing to read the very insightful article by an esteemed columnist of this newspaper entitled, “A citizen's expectations from the police.”

There are many reasons that have been offered from time to time and over the ages by a section of the Muslim clergy to keep women ensconced within the four walls of the house, but never has one heard such a comment that girls should not go to school because doing so would make them “disobedient”. This comment was uttered by the head of Hefazat-e-Islam (HI), a person who is known to be well-versed in various aspects of Islam. And that is what makes the statement all the more surprising.

Despite all the shenanigans that had been resorted to, to win the election, we will have a new parliament for another five years.

I had concluded my previous column with the assessment that the Awami League would in no way countenance a situation where the BNP secured the second highest number of seats so that it could not lay claim to being the opposition in the parliament.

There is only one political party in the country that understands and indulges in professional politics. It can think and plan ahead to achieve a predetermined objective (perpetuation of power).

Religion-based parties have a canny method of making political space for themselves and becoming a part of the mainstream political system eventually.

Our trans-port sector can never become what it really is supposed to be—an important people-friendly service provider. That is unless the sector is freed of the political grip influencing, running and shielding it. And that, perhaps, is a tall order.

Nelson Mandela had once said that dialogue is the most powerful weapon at one's disposal. Yet it is surprising to see how often we have abjured the path of discourse and allowed short-sightedness to influence our decisions.

Clearly, there is an absence of sync in the EC, and a palatable lack of internal organisation. Firstly, it seemed unnecessarily evasive about the date of the election.

“We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour.”

On the face of it everything looks set for the upcoming general election. The quinquennial event, which is sometimes a put-on to remind us that we are living under a democratic dispensation, is likely to be held at the end of December.

One of the benefits of living in this beautiful land of ours is that one often gets transported, in one's fancy, to the land of the diamond king, or like Alice, to Wonderland.

The law enforcing agencies have a lot to answer for the incidences of abduction and disappearances, a phenomenon that has assumed alarming regularity. Reportedly, there are over 300 victims of enforced disappearances who remain traceless. Predictably, the families point fingers at the law enforcing agencies—the manner in which they were picked up, as described by the families, leaves very little to the imagination as to the likely identity of the abductors.

With every passing day we come by newer reports of the nature of barbarity that the Rohingyas in Rakhine have had to endure.

“As in so many other developing societies of South Asia, in Assam too, myths and dogma take root, develop their own reality, and begin to dictate political debate unchallenged by the mainstream media, academia or larger intelligentsia.

We have witnessed the most unprecedented things in the method that the government has employed to suppress the demand for safe roads, a demand not only of the students who have been out on the streets for the last seven days but a common call.

This was the second consecutive election in Pakistan held following the completion of full tenure of the incumbent government, but Nawaz Sharif added his name, once again, to the ingloriously long list of prime ministers not to have completed his or her full term in office.

If there was any doubt about President Trump's racist inclinations, it was fully removed by his pontification to the European leaders about, what he thinks, the negative consequences of immigration on Europe.

The police handling of the entire anti-quota episode so far reminds me of the pictorial idiom that one finds displayed in many public places in China and Japan, in particular in the form of three primates popularly known as the thinking sages or the wise apes, each covering three of the five main sensory organs.