Shakhawat Liton

He was hardly known to outsiders until his father, General Ziaur Rahman who became Bangladesh's president in the process of several coups and counter-coups, died in another military putsch in May 1981. Through a Bangladesh Television programme, the countrymen, eventually came to know of Tarique Rahman. And today, he is facing life term as the court verdict goes. From the crux of political power he now lives the life of a fugitive.

Juktofront, a platform of three political parties that played a crucial role in forging “greater national unity”, wants a sweeping change in the current winner-take- all system in politics.

It is a piece of paper full of lies and yet it is the legal government document that allows a person to drink alcohol in Bangladesh.

It took decades for the Indian Election Commission to accomplish the Herculean task of introducing electronic voting machines across the country for parliamentary elections.

In an unprecedented move since the 1989 Lebanon conflict, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued a letter to the Security Council a year ago seeking action against the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in Myanmar.

The repatriation of the Rohingyas remains elusive even nine months after the signing of an agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar.

We still suffer from the fallout of August 15.

When Antonio Guterres visited Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox's Bazar in 2008, it housed only 10,800 Rohingyas. The total number of Rohingya population living in the district was around 27,000. They had arrived there in previous years and were not repatriated to Myanmar like many others.

The good thing about Gazipur City Corporation polls is that it was peaceful and no incident of casualty was recorded which is rare in our election history.

The just-concluded Khulna City Corporation election may be considered as the beginning of the run-up to the next parliamentary polls. Elections to four other city corporations are expected to be held in the next few months before the national polls which may be held in December. Five years ago, the same things happened in the run-up to the last parliamentary election held on January 5, 2014.

It's called crazy medicine. Produced in Myanmar, the dangerous drug very easily crosses the border and reaches cities, towns and villages of Bangladesh through various channels -- sometimes in full knowledge of law enforcers. It now seems unstoppable and is poised to cripple the country's biggest hope -- the youth.

Some previous verdicts of the Supreme Court about disputes over elections now offer the Election Commission strong legal grounds to have the stay orders on Gazipur and Dhaka north city mayoral polls vacated.

They are like prisons. Yet, the Myanmar government calls them camps. In those camps in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, one lakh Rohingyas have been languishing for almost six years.

Myanmar has been playing tricks not only on Bangladesh but also on the United Nations Security Council over the repatriation of Rohingyas since September last year.

A Latin proverb says “Experience is the best teacher.” In view of famous British historian James Anthony Froude: “Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.” However, our policy of learning is different. Experience seems to have taught us little. This seems to have been reflected again in offering the police arbitrary powers in the proposed digital security law to take action against alleged offences committed using digital devices.

President Abdul Hamid made a unique record in the history of Bangladesh by swearing in as the head of the state for second consecutive term yesterday.

It may be a little surprising for the ordinary citizen to know that according to the proposed digital security law, the punishment for spreading propaganda or campaign against the Liberation War of 1971 or its spirit using digital devices or instigating to do so is almost the same as it is for the crime of murdering a human being.

The Editors' Council yesterday at a meeting with the law minister and post telecommuni-cations and ICT minister expressed deep concern over some provisions in the digital security bill placed in parliament last week. Freedom of expression and independent journalism, they feared, will largely be affected if those provisions remain in the proposed legislation.

This seems to have become a game being played with people's lives and their right to life.

In 2016, the Supreme Court in a verdict on widespread abuse of police's powers over arrest and detention strongly denounced all sorts of torture by the law enforcement agencies and directed magistrates to take action against errant policemen in case of any such incident.