Our foreign friends
The piece mainly addressed the recent comments by Her Excellency, the US ambassador, in Bangladesh and the letter sent to the president by the EU Parliament about the recent deployment of army by President/CA Iajuddin Ahmed. By all means, the arguments raised by Mr SA Khan to this end deserve further examination for the sake of a clear understanding of the subject.
In my opinion, the editor has displayed a very strong view about the role of foreign friends in our internal matters which is understandable since he is one of the leaders of this well read daily of our nation. Having said that, the arguments offered in the piece, certainly, are ill timed to say the least. The author concludes by saying that:
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. "Yes, there is everything wrong with our politics, and, yes, we have been not well served by our politicians, and, yes, we all understand that the army must not used to reap political benefits for any particular political party. But we don't need a foreign envoy sermonizing in public how he or she thinks the people should go about sorting out problems that are ours exclusively and for us to solve. However, it is for the political parties and our leadership to see that their actions do not provide the slightest excuse for our foreign friends to meddle in our internal affairs."
In fact, this conclusion led me to write this piece and I would like to raise some issues which with respect, the editor, have missed in his strongly worded commentary. I must make myself abundantly clear in the beginning that I have no problem with the spirit of the conclusion, but my problem is, it sounded misplaced under the present political environment of our nation. Why?
It is not a secret any more that our politicians and leaders failed to live with democratic principles and public confidence over the last fifteen years. But we must not forget that the nation has been under a supposedly neutral care taker government headed by the president who is occupying both the positions of the head of state and head of government since almost the last two months.
It is needless to repeat the unexpected and alleged partisan performance of the CTG including its head over this period. I must, however, mention that all the advisors of past and present CTGs are well-respected citizens of this nation.
The present outcome has been predicted long ago by many commentators that a physically unwell person like Professor Iajuddin has taken too a great burden on his shoulders and is unlikely to finish the job with even a minimum satisfaction.
Is it not now clear that the root cause of all the crises is the CA himself than the political leaders? Yes, we know that politicians are scoundrels, but, I am afraid, the nation expected something better from an educationist-cum-president.
My point is, at this sorry stage of the nation to say "our foreign friends meddling in our internal affairs" is certainly misplaced. This reminds me a popular Bengali old saying: "Shak di-e mass dhaka." What does it mean? It means we do not want to admit the truth and knowingly or unknowingly would like to divert the course of action and put the blame to someone else's shoulder. In other words, we refuse to call a spade a spade.
There is, of course, Article 41a of the Vienna Convention. I am sure the honourable Ms Butenis and the EU Parliament know this very well. At the end of the day, the question is, are they really meddling in our internal affairs? I do not think so.
They said repeatedly in the past that the development partners want from the president/CA to create an environment for the 2007 election where every political party gets equal treatment and every voter is included in the electoral rolls.
Our foreign friends asking for this from the president/CA is in no way an intrusion to our internal affairs. To expect this is legitimate. The nation does not want the world should sit on both hands and watch an unprecedented election engineering taking place in this land.
I must say, certainly, we are not under threat of any sort from outside. However, we are under a great threat from within. The way things are unfolding, the president/CA unlikely to avoid a calamity for the nation and the history is unlikely to treat him kindly, to say the least.