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25 April 2004, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Chowdhoury Mohibul Hassan, London School of Economics and Political Science (Law Department), London
25 April 2004, 18:00 PM
Politics: Bangladesh style!. PHOTO: STAR
I am writing in response to Mr. Mahasen's letter to the editor on April 22, 2004. The kind of logical deduction that Mr. Mahasen has applied on the Awami League's apparent 'fading out' and 'weight loss' is beyond one's contemplation. His logic lacked political neutrality. Perhaps, he was speaking 'philosophically'. No one disagrees with his suggestion that 'changing time requires adaptability', surely it does, so we ask what is that lack of adaptability Mr. Mahasen sees in the AL which led him to comment as he did? May I demand some evidence of that? In my opinion not only the AL but also other political parties, namely the BNP, lack that.

Tolerance and other virtues that he talked about indeed are not sold in Dhaka markets, neither are they found in our ruling alliance. Intolerance to opposition movement, wholesale arrests and intimidation by the security forces day and night are all there before our eyes-- we can see where all these virtues lie.

According to Mr. Mahasen, AL politicians aren't able to do politics by their head which he asserted, without directly pointing towards them, but rather indirectly, by mentioning his abstract political philosophy that one must do politics with heart and so on, in his 'Critique of the Awami League'. Who is his idol? Who is getting ready to salvage the people of Bangladesh while the AL undergoes a process of 'self-immolation'?

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His assertion regarding the change of so-called social indicators with reference to 'the thousands of students' and people alike, 'who go abroad', in my opinion bears no real significance in a country where people live in everyday misery of misrule and repression. It is those people's demand that far outweigh the demands or opinions of the ones he has mentioned. And in my opinion the AL is well in line with the people's demands.

We do not intend to argue with his philosophical abstractions; 'rainbow theory' and so on, we oppose his wholesale 'critique', which doesn't apply to the single biggest political party of Bangladesh, the AL. The AL does not need any certification from any other person as such, as it has been certified by the people of Bangladesh with the highest percentage of votes in the last parliamentary elections.