Sense & Insensibility
Voters' list in the museum and ....
Shahnoor Wahid
The mighty mountain rumbles and grumbles and shakes violently for a long time. Something big is in the deep of its abdomen and struggling to come out soon. Then finally it comes out. What is it? Well, it is a small rat! You look disappointed? Then consider this. After all the rhetoric and rhapsody and tarjan and garjan (uproar) about rule of law, transparency, accountability, election wada (pledges), image distortion, plastic surgery of distorted image, unnayaner rajniti (politics for development), janagoner kallyan (people's welfare) and developmental floods, the Chief Selection Commissioner (CSC), at the command of the masters, produces a voters' list that is so flagrantly flawed that it would be worth keeping it in the museum for the posterity. Maybe a photocopy could be sent to the British Museum for the whole world to see. There is good side of the story as well. Many scholars consider this the first and best document prepared for engineering an election therefore they are of the opinion that it should be taught as the major subject in the Department of Election Engineering in all the educational institutes. And it is being discussed that groups of admiring and appreciative citizens have special plaques made for the entire team that spent sleepless nights in preparing this unique document. The gentlemen deserve some recognition for their brilliant work, don't they? Maybe most deshbashi (citizens) failed to discern their 'hidden' talent, there are some who did and they do not want to be branded as an ungrateful lot. Here is another good news for the CSC and his comrades in arm. My overseas source has sent an email urging me to send the message to the CSC that political parties of some foreign countries, particularly in the west, want him to join them to prepare their voters' list and oversee the elections so that their party may have a landslide victory. They have highly appreciated the courage and tenacity of the CSC and his comrades to prevail in the face of High Court ruling, country-wide protests and making a bonfire of their list. So, looks like good deeds get appreciated by some people somewhere! Then we have this anti-corruption commission to write home about. This great commission is getting habuduboo (drowning) in the wide ocean of corruption knowing not which direction to swim to for the shore. After putting old wine in a new bottle, it began with a small bang, but like many things that begin with a bang and end up in a whimper, also quickly lost steam. In a recent exchange of opinion at its office, the officials concerned expressed their inability to do anything about corruption in the election process! Then what are you there for? In one move the commission is said to have submitted a report to the authorities on a large number of cars gone missing from various developmental projects. But nothing much was heard about the report later. Understandably, sitting ministers, lying ministers, full-time ministers, part-time ministers, secretaries, joint secretaries, disjointed secretaries, conjoined secretaries, project managers, project directors, wives of project directors, children of project directors, girlfriends of consultants, servants of consultants who have been using those vehicles could not tolerate the audacity of the old guns managing the anti-corruption commission. The commission has not been created to point fingers at them--the high and mighty-- who run the country! They are unofficially entitled to use those vehicles, to go to bazaars, shopping malls and schools. Mr. Gouri Sen is there with his coffer to buy gas and pay for other costs, so why do you bother? Rather, the commission should go after the meter readers, telephone line men, darogas (police officers) and peons who have no right to make money through dui numberie (corrupt) means. They must be caught and taken to the gallows! Well, with so much hullabaloo going on it is no wonder the commission now resembles a toothless tiger licking its paws in a quiet corner. And out there, corruption is having a field day to flourish and proliferate on the fertile soil of Bangladesh. And it did with amazing speed and continuity! The country's name has been at the top of all in the list of most corrupt countries in the world for four consecutive years! And we mention this in every seminar, every workshop and every round table conference. For many more years we shall keep on saying this to amuse the world. You see, living in an environment that breeds corruption, we hardly react to news items like bureaucrats violating service rules to join the rat race to get coalition ticket to contest the next general election. It's a free-for-all country, isn't it? Shahnoor Wahid is Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.
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