Football not the answer

I am happy to know that Mr. Ahmed had a hearty laugh reading my letter, at least my letter was funny! Unfortunately, Mr. Ahmed wasted a good amount of his time writing a rather long letter which had nothing new and it wasn't funny either. It seems that he has misunderstood my letter. I do not at all advocate a football-game politics in Bangladesh. On the contrary, I agree with him that football is not the answer and that is why I prefer to see an end to the football game played with our lives by the two main political parties.

Mr. Ahmed identified the problems-- "we have failed abjectly in the political spheres and in maintaining law and order and arresting corruption." He further suggests "both of them (the top two political leaders) are either directly or indirectly nurturing criminals". But we already know these. He then provides us the solution- " the two ladies with their colleagues must jointly decide to end criminalisation of our politics because our political leaders and political parties recruit and protect the criminals." I agree with his solution; but isn't that exactly what we have been telling these two ladies all along?

It seems that Mr. Ahmed went to great length in identifying some problems and solutions which many of us identified ten years ago! No one is disputing the problems we have. No one is disputing the solutions either. What is at dispute is that, how do we go about "implementing" these solutions? If Mr. Ahmed thinks Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia will volunteer to address our problems out of their love for this nation, then he is dead wrong. So the most important question still remains unanswered and, sadly, Mr. Ahmed didn't provide us any answer. I would request him to kindly look at this issue again and suggest how we can force/convince our leaders to do what needs to be done.

In my last letter I didn't ask for the government to be kicked out, as wrongly implied by Mr. Ahmed. I wrote "Let's unite once again and bring about some change". I would also ask him to read some of my previous letters in which I have always protested against the idea of kicking out a democratically elected government, whether it is AL, BNP or LGM (Little Green Men)!