A new compact in Dhaka?

DURING the last decade and a half, politics in Bangladesh has run a paradoxical course. There has been, on the one hand, an undiminished attachment to the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy and, on the other, a persistent violation of its basic principle that elections produce a government of the majority party or a coalition of parties and a ‘loyal’ opposition’ that offers policy alternatives, primarily in the national parliament.

Bangladesh has not been without articulate non-governmental organisations, a robust civil society and a vigorous tradition of the independence of the media.

But this framework of democratic assent and dissent has frequently been overshadowed by boycotts of parliament, prolonged strikes, unruly demonstrations and, more recently, by increased political violence. The events of the last few months seem to have posed the question of whether the polity that produced this intense drama has reached a breaking point.

Clearly, a new factor has become discernible in the shape of a demand for the reconstruction of the greatly stressed polity. In its oversimplified version, it is a manoeuvre to sideline the old leadership so that a new leadership emerges. The project rests on three fundamental assumptions.

One, the political confrontations that paralyse governance are largely the result of irreconcilable rivalry between Begum Khaleda Zia and Hasina Wajed who have dominated the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League (AL) respectively. Both of them, it is said, control their parties with the help of a coterie of power brokers who have no real faith in democratic institutions. In this analysis, the rise and fall of the political party created by General Ershad after seizing power has not

made much impact on their enduring hostility.

Two, there is a strong nexus between the politics of these two mainstream parties and rampant corruption in the country.

Three, disillusionment with them first contributed to the noticeable empowerment of Jamaat-i-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote (Islamic Unity Front) in the electoral process and as BNP’s coalition partner and then to the emergence of far more radical and violence-prone fringe groups such as Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh ( JMJB), which reject constitutionalism and aim at an Islamist revolution.

On present evidence, the reformist project has gradually evolved as the crisis around the elections that had to be held before January 25, 2007, unfolded. A constitutional amendment of 1996 requires that elections be held under a neutral caretaker government. The government led by Begum Khaleda Zia ostensibly fulfilled this requirement but Hasina Wajed was not prepared to put her faith in the new elections without a series of major decisions involving personalities and procedures. She backed her demands by street power.

As the confrontation worsened, Bangladesh witnessed a tacit intervention by seemingly apolitical technocrats with links to donor international financial institutions apprehensive about the impact on the national economy. Reluctant to stage a classical coup d’etat, the armed forces have decided to underwrite the reformist agenda.

Parallels of such a convergence of forces are easily found in Pakistan’s own history and the objective is nearly always a re-engineering of the political class. It led to declaration of emergency and postponement of election. It is being validated by embarking upon an anti-corruption drive which has already taken into its net important political figures including Khaleda Zia’s son Tareq Rahman

In the light of the experience of the past direct interventions, the army has apparently decided that it can act as a praetorian guard with subtlety and without pulling down the basic political organisation. For one thing, it probably genuinely believes that long term national interest is better served by avoiding extra-constitutional steps. Then in Bangladesh, the concept of the unity of command has not been as inflexible as in Pakistan.

The top echelon of the army has often harboured more than one view and that is probably the case this time as well. Be it as it may, the armed forces are pushing for reforms while retaining the umbrella of a perfectly legitimate interim government which in all likelihood will extend the emergency beyond the present expiry date in May.

Perhaps taking a cue from Pakistan, it seems to have played with the idea of exiling both Khaleda Zia and Hasina Wajed. In fact, a government press note implied that much and Hasina Wajed was not allowed to board a Dhaka –bound flight from London.The widely circulated story that Khaleda Zia would head for Saudi Arabia was followed by reports that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar had declined to accept another guest from the Muslim states of the subcontinent. Meanwhile, the interim government also did not quite relish a legal battle in the higher courts of the country. So the exile has petered out as an instant option.

The interim government has not, however, abandoned the intention of heralding a new dawn by somehow removing the massive shadow of the daughter of the founding father and of the custodian of the legacy of the general who widened the political base of the country by redefining Bangladeshi nationalism.

The fact of the matter is that the chequered course followed by Bangladesh’s parliamentary politics is not entirely because of the personal ego of a leader or two; it reflects the lingering presence in the body politic of certain divisions that accompanied its traumatic emergence as a sovereign state. It will be much easier to put the ship of state on an even keel if these divisions were not exploited again and again for reasons of political expediency.

The first upheaval came when the founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, decided to become a powerful president and transformed Awami League, the party of freedom movement, into the left-leaning Bangladesh Peasants and Workers League. This experiment ended with his tragic assassination on August 15, 1975.

It took his successor Ziaur Rahman nearly three years to promulgate a revised constitution. His main political legacy has been the BNP designed to be the main alternative to the restored AL. Historically, the two parties have represented rival interpretations of the idea of Bangladesh.

Awami League began with democracy, socialism, secularism and nationalism as the guiding principles of the state. Secularism was recognition of the more varied composition of the population of the breakaway province of Pakistan, a conceptual device to distance it from the short-lived federation with that Islamic Republic and a more modernistic approach to the problems of today.

The task of reconciling secularism with the strong Islamic identity of the people, however, remained a foremost concern. Similarly, the initial definition of nationalism in ethnic and linguistic terms had to be differentiated from Bengali nationalism on the Indian side of the border to resist the gravitational pull of the much bigger neighbour.

Extreme polarisation between freedom fighters and the rest was another issue that needed to be mediated by opening up political space to groups of people who were aligned with the wrong side of history in 1970.

General Ziaur Rahman founded BNP to resolve some of these inherent tensions. His concept of Bangladeshi identity sought synthesis with the Islamic heritage of the nation; it also gave nationalism a territorial base. He tried to heal the internal divisions. BNP also wanted to make state socialism and free enterprise a matter of political choice.

In the international context, Awami League has often been dubbed as “pro-Indian” while BNP has laid claims to a stronger assertion of national sovereignty. In actual practice, it cannot work for a sharply different India policy as the demands of realpolitik are identical for either party. It is more a question of style than substance.

Political violence in the country has a complex socio-economic genesis. It has been exacerbated by the tendency of political parties to fight their battles outside the parliament. Fringe groups assert themselves through terrorist acts. They have demonstrated their ability to survive bans as well as tough operations by the newly raised Rapid Action Battalions composed largely of military personnel by finding a place for themselves in the political undergrowth of the country.

There is doubtless proliferation of small arms, which is partly a legacy of the 1971 guerrilla war and partly related to increasing flows of weapons throughout South Asia. Crime syndicates and fringe political groups cooperate all over the region.

Conversations with Professor Ghulam Azam and other Islamic leaders of Bangladesh some 20 years ago revealed fears that efforts made by the freedom fighters’ lobby to keep them out of legitimate politics would radicalise the impatient segments of the religious opinion.

This radicalisation was also encouraged by larger forces at work in the region. Once the global war on terror began, the western media hyped up the degree and expanse of religious radicalism in Bangladesh.

External pressures on governments since 2003 have forced the government into a bloody conflict with these fringe movements. The army and the culture of establishment in which the caretaker government is rooted are evidently under pressure from external powers to develop, as in Pakistan, an agenda to secularise national politics.

How far this project of re-engineering the political class succeeds will become clear only over several months. Bangladesh’s best hope is still a new national compact between the warring political parties for which the two veteran ladies would have to transcend personal rivalry and vendetta. In the final analysis, their ideological differences are not unbridgeable and the nation has enough dynamism to meet the challenges of our time.

The writer is a former ambassador to Bangladesh.

Where are we headed?

FIRST it was the opposition to women’s participation in the marathon, calling it immoral and unethical and against the principles of Islam. (There had been opposition to a lot of things in the name of religion earlier but there is no point recounting these.)

Then came the opposition to the anti-polio campaign, with some clerics in the NWFP warning people against polio vaccinations and calling it a part of western conspiracy aimed at reducing the Muslim population as the vaccine would render them impotent. They also said that preventive measures against polio should not be taken, as those killed during an outbreak were ‘martyrs’, and that finding a cure (vaccination) for an epidemic was not allowed in Islam.

A group of so-called local Taliban went around stopping women from stepping out of their houses and shutting down girls’ schools. The zealots distributed pamphlets warning the people of horrible consequences if they did not stop their women from going to work or their girls from attending schools and colleges. There were instances where girls’ schools and colleges were bombed to frighten parents into keeping their daughters away from such institutions.Then the barbers in the NWFP were warned of punishment and fines if they trimmed anyone’s beard. The murder of Punjab’s social welfare minister, Zille Huma, seems to be a part of the same religious extremism as the MPA was accused of not dressing properly.

As if all this were not enough, female students of a seminary in Islamabad illegally occupied a children’s library in retaliation against the demolition of a mosque built on illegally occupied land, making withdrawal conditional on the reconstruction of the mosque; later they added the enforcement of the Sharia in the country to their demands.

These people are not alone or acting on their own; they have the support of other seminaries and now they have taken upon themselves the task of reforming society according to their own nations of Islam. They kidnapped three women from their home accusing them of being involved in immoral activities; their male supporters got busy cleansing society by burning DVDs and VCDs, after first threatening the video shop owners of dire consequences if they did not close their business. And now they have even set up Qazi courts to enforce Sharia and pass judgement and settle disputes ignoring the country’s laws and the writ of the country’s government.

The question arises: where will it all take us and who has given them the right to impose their will on others and who has appointed them as the guardians of society? It is clearly a case of denial of human rights and personal freedom. They have no right to break into someone’s house and accuse them of being involved in wrongdoing, or ask anyone to shut down his business or destroy anyone’s property. The occupation of the children’s library is tantamount to denying the children the right and opportunity to read and improve their knowledge, as no parents would allow their child to go there even if the Hafsa women claim not to be restricting children’s entry.

The fact is that these extremist elements and self-appointed guardians of our morals do not believe in freedom of belief and expression. They do not accept an individual’s right to make his choice relating to values and way of life. They want to coerce the majority into submission through use of force.

If things are allowed to move unchecked in this direction, fanaticism will spread to other parts of the country and in the not too distant a future whatever freedom of choice and pursuit is still there will cease to exist. There have been instances in the past of acid throwing on women not wearing a burqa, and women being asked not to drive. It is feared that a time may come when women would not be able to leave their homes without a male escort as was the case under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Such Talibanisation of society simply must not be tolerated or allowed to take root in society. It should be nipped when it is still in its initial stages.

We need to take all possible measures to allow our citizens to pursue a path to progress as we have already wasted a lot of time being involved in petty issues.

Instead of paying attention to the real problems facing the people like education, health and poverty eradication, irrelevant issues are being raised. Our health and education status is already below that of many other countries in the region. Creating obstacles to anti-polio campaigns and stopping girls from going to school will do the country serious harm. Pakistan is one of four countries in the world where polio is still endemic. Last year saw 39 cases of polio only in the NWFP, up from 11 in 2005.

Almost half of the country’s population does not have access to clean drinking water or sanitation facilities; the literacy rate is only 53 per cent (male 65, female 40), primary school enrolment rate is 86 per cent (though a large number, especially in rural areas, drop out before completing primary education), infant mortality rate is 74 per thousand while the mortality rate for under-fives is 98 per cent; and many seriously ill women die even before reaching a hospital. Women already have a low status in society; creating hurdles in the way of female education would further curtail their rights.

The problem is that our masses are largely ignorant and lack a sense of direction. Successive governments have done little to improve their condition. Without proper guidance, they have been left vulnerable and are exploited in the name of religion, as religion is the weak point of the people who have no sense of direction and nothing to look forward to.

Religious leaders have a powerful influence on people in every society. In many countries of the world clerics have played an important role in shaping public opinion in favour of adopting newer approaches on many aspects of life. In many countries, even in South Asia, clerics are playing a significant role in creating awareness about Aids and its prevention. An attempt can be made to make our clerics aware of the benefits of polio prevention and how important it is to immunise one’s child. But if our clerics are not ready to play a positive role at least they should not create obstacles to society’s progress in the name of religion.

Extremism in any form is bad and when it begins to infringe on people’s rights and responsibilities, it simply cannot be allowed by any civil society, where everyone has a right to lead his life according to his own choice as long as it does not harm anyone else. Why should some extremist elements be allowed to force their opinions on others?

This extremism has to be stopped soon or else it will take a large part of society back to the Stone Age.

It’s Wolfowitz’s hypocrisy By Naomi Klein

IT’S not the act itself, it's the hypocrisy. That's the line on Paul Wolfowitz coming from editorial pages around the world. It's neither: not the act (the way he disregarded the rules to get his girlfriend a pay rise); and not the hypocrisy (the fact that Wolfowitz's mission as World Bank president is fighting for "good governance").

First, let's dispense with the supposed hypocrisy problem. "Who wants to be lectured on corruption by someone telling them to 'Do as I say, not as I do'?" asked one journalist. No one, of course. But that's a pretty good description of the game of one-way strip poker that is our global trade system, in which the United States and Europe – via the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation – tell the developing world: "You take down your trade barriers and we'll keep ours up." From farm subsidies to the Dubai Ports World scandal, hypocrisy is our economic order's guiding principle.

Wolfowitz's only crime was taking his institution's international posture to heart. The fact that he has responded to the scandal by hiring a celebrity lawyer and shopping for a leadership "coach" is just more evidence that he has fully absorbed the World Bank way: when in doubt, blow the budget on overpriced consultants and call it aid.

The more serious lie at the centre of the controversy is the implication that the World Bank was an institution that had impeccable ethical credentials – until, according to 42 former World Bank executives, its credibility was "fatally compromised" by Wolfowitz. (Many American liberals have seized on this fairytale, addicted to the fleeting rush that comes from forcing neocons to resign.)

The truth is that the bank's credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatise its water system; when it made telecom privatisation a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labour "flexibility" in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq. Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is that in 2005 the World Bank withheld a promised $100m after the country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and education. Some anti-poverty organisation.

But the area where the World Bank has the most tenuous claim to moral authority is in the fight against corruption. Almost everywhere that mass state pillage has taken place over the past four decades, the World Bank and the IMF have been first on the scene of the crime. And no, they have not been looking the other way as the locals lined their pockets; they have been writing the ground rules for the theft and yelling "Faster, please!" – a process known as rapid-fire shock therapy.

Russia under the leadership of the recently departed Boris Yeltsin was a case in point. Beginning in 1990, the World Bank led the charge for the former Soviet Union to impose immediately what it called "radical reform". When Mikhail Gorbachev refused to go along, Yeltsin stepped up. This bulldozer of a man would not let anything or anyone stand in the way of the Washington-authored programme, including Russia's elected politicians.

After Yeltsin ordered army tanks to open fire on demonstrators in October 1993, killing hundreds and leaving the parliament building blackened by flames, the stage was set for the fire-sale privatisations of Russia's most precious state assets to the so-called oligarchs. Of course, the World Bank was there. Of the democracy-free lawmaking frenzy that followed Yeltsin's coup, Charles Blitzer, the World Bank's chief economist on Russia, told the Wall Street Journal: "I've never had so much fun in my life."

When Yeltsin left office, his family had become inexplicably wealthy, while several of his deputies were enmeshed in bribery scandals. These incidents were reported in the west, as they always are, as unfortunate local embellishments on an otherwise ethical economic modernisation project. In fact, corruption was embedded in the very idea of shock therapy.

The whirlwind speed of change was crucial to overcoming the widespread rejection of the reforms, but it also meant that by definition there could be no supervision. Moreover, the payoffs for local officials were an indispensable incentive for Russia's apparatchiks to create the wide-open market that Washington was demanding. The bottom line is that there is good reason that corruption has never been a high priority for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - their officials understand that when enlisting politicians to advance an economic agenda guaranteed to win those politicians furious enemies at home, there generally has to be a little in it for the politicians in bank accounts abroad.

Russia is far from unique. From Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator who managed to accumulate more than 125 bank accounts while building the world's first neoliberal state, to Carlos Menem, the Argentinean president who drove around in a bright red Ferrari Testarossa while liquidating his country, to Iraq's "missing billions" today, there is in every country a class of ambitious and bloody-minded politicians who are willing to act as western subcontractors. They will take a fee, and that fee is called corruption – the silent but ever present partner in the crusade to privatise the developing world.

The three main institutions at the heart of that crusade are in crisis - not because of the small hypocrisies, but because of the big ones. The World Trade Organisation cannot get back on track, the International Monetary Fund is going broke, displaced by Venezuela and China. And now the World Bank is going down.

The Financial Times reports that when World Bank managers dispensed advice, "they were now laughed at". Perhaps we should all laugh at the World Bank. What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the effort to cleanse the bank's ruinous history by repeating the absurd narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable anti-poverty organisation has been sullied by one man. The bank understandably wants to throw Wolfowitz overboard. I say: let the ship go down with the captain. — Dawn/Guardian Service

Going green and meaning it

"I'M not a plastic bag" reads this week's must-have, a designer tote sold by the not-especially-designer Sainsbury's. All 20,000 were gone within hours, sold at a fiver each to shoppers keen to prove that they could consume as fervently as ever and yet be green too. The limits of such an approach was illustrated by reports that some of the bags were handed over in the conventional sunbed-orange carriers.

Buying yet another product to demonstrate one's concern for the environment smacks of self-contradiction. The approach that many companies and consumers take, however, fits the same pattern by participating in various schemes to offset their carbon emissions.

As we report today, the senior scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are set to conclude that the best way to halt global warming lies above all else in existing technology that can directly cut emissions. President Bush's fantasies of launching giant sunlight-blocking mirrors into space are swiftly despatched as "largely speculative, uncosted and with potential for unknown side effects".

Instead, the IPCC is likely to call this Friday for something more prosaic but far more useful: greater energy efficiency in our cars, buildings, power plants and elsewhere. It pinpoints developing countries as the focus for change, arguing that they can leapfrog over the environmentally harmful technologies previously used in the industrialised world.

So while Britain has advanced from oil lamps to tungsten lights and is now considering the adoption of greener light-emitting diodes (LEDs), rural India can go straight from kerosene lamps to LEDs. That is the possibility, although even the prospect of greater global warming may not be enough to turn it into reality.

Certainly the threat has had little impact on the way rich countries go about business. Instead of cleaner technologies, the British are largely relying on market mechanisms that allow them to carry on as before. The boom in carbon offsetting, which should really be called carbon outsourcing. The same volume of greenhouse gases are emitted in the same way as before, but are compensated for by some third party - for instance, by buying more efficient stoves for African villages.

It is a painless way of contracting out your problem. No wonder, then, that the practice has been (noisily) adopted by so many, from big businesses to politicians to pop stars. The most lasting legacy of defunct Scouse girl group Atomic Kitten will surely be a clump of trees in the Ribble Valley planted in their name to make up for the CO2 emissions from their touring.

It is heartening, therefore, when companies announce a green strategy, as Eurostar did this week, in which offsetting is only a last resort. Not only is carbon offsetting a too-easy solution to a profound problem, its mechanics are too often wanting. There is no harmonised standard of practice for voluntary offsets, which means that some of the credits being traded in this £2bn market are of negligible environmental value.

Big publicity and bad practice: this is surely a recipe for popular cynicism, just as the public is taking a real interest in environmental issues. Following the Stern review, the IPCC reports and an increased emphasis from politicians, there is a greater pressure in this country for businesses and government to take action. But the interest could be fleeting.

Pollsters at Ipsos Mori point out that back in July 1989, against the backdrop of a benign economy and green speeches by that former chemist Margaret Thatcher, the environment was cited by survey respondents as the most pressing issue facing Britain. It held pole position for all of a month and, by the early 90s, the economy was the only issue in town. This time round it is crucial to build on public concern and turn it into a consensus for real reform. That cannot be done by schemes that, without proper rules, risk looking like little more than wheezes.

––The Guardian, London