HOW venal and vicious has become criminality in ruling party politics is [being revealed] in shocking detail with each passing day. Both in the cases of Phulgazi upazilla chairman Ekramul Haq and the seven serial murders in Narayanganj this is happening in spite of the diversionary, shielding … attempts by ruling party leaders.

With the opposition crushed through [a] morally and democratically untenable election, law-enforcement agencies politicised and [the] … local support base pampered … criminalisation [has] thrived. … Basically, internal feuding and simmering rivalries centring around expropriation of public wealth, tender business and rent-seeking were bound to generate … clash of interests. And thus were masterminded plots of murder with hired killers to execute these.

Organised crime syndicates are an upshot of criminalisation of party politics. When the line between the ruling party and the government is blurred, criminalisation draws sustenance from it. In the process, the state’s authority to protect citizens dwindles.

On available evidence, it appears that the Awami League has been infiltrated by some criminal elements....— (May 26)

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2014