After enduring, rather battling, all sorts of disparagement and media-bashing, the iron-willed CEC is perhaps looking back at the event-filled months in office. He came with a mission and he has done as he pleased. He cared little for what others, even the High Court, thought about his stand on an issue, on any issue. Being a judge himself, he attempted to juggle with court judgement to suit his purpose. Was it his very own purpose? Is he the righteous man that he tries to project to all? Is he really a neutral person, as he claims himself?

Whatever he was or is, the CEC did manage to create an aura of mystery, even suspicion, around him throughout the past year. No other individual, besides the prime minister, was given so many column-inches in newspapers and footage on television channels. He also became the darling of the talented cartoonists of the country. But when it came to sticking to his guns, he excelled above all. For these and many other reasons, evaluating him remains a daunting task. Perhaps history will one day place him before the people in true perspective.

Elegy written at Biman's bedside
Biman Bangladesh Airlines is in deep coma. It is kept alive with life-support system. The 33-year old airline, the pride of the country, the flag carrier of Bangladesh, is suffering from various ailments, many of which are fatal. We had written on the ill-health of Biman in this column some months back, but we never thought it would come to such a tragic finale, so soon.

The pride of the 15 crore people of Bangladesh has been trampled under the feet with devilish glee by a handful of greedy people to earn millions. They had no compunction, no qualm whatsoever, about the failing health of Biman, as they went on plundering the airline of all its resources and wealth.

Today, none of those people who have bought flats in New York or Los Angeles with Biman's money are to be seen at the bedside of Biman as it struggles to survive. Even today they are plotting to make a profit out of the carcass of Biman. Next, they would pick up the bones and sell those in the market as scrap iron. There are two words that are missing in their dictionary. They are "patriotism" and "shame."

No nation in the world has allowed a handful of people to deal such a deathblow to its national airline. We have done that. We have seen from a distance how corruption, backed by the political leaders of the time, had gone wayward in Biman's office and how it spread to each and every station abroad. From the sweepers to the MDs and ministers and secretaries that came and went in succession, all are culpable, directly or indirectly, by commission or by omission, in the plundering of Biman. It needs no super brain to understand the consequential downward plunge.

The 15 crore people want to know from the decision makers, past and present, whether Biman has been slow poisoned all these years to hasten its demise in a bid to pave the way for another lot of greedy people to come into the scene? If so, then what will happen to our national airline?

Strange local news
Our attention has been drawn to a huge ad in a newspaper. It's about new bottled water named Shanti and it is being bottled and marketed by our good old WASA. Remember that (in)famous authority that has been messing up our precious water since time immemorial? Precisely that. After supplying earthworm and human excreta through their water pipes, this organization has started to collect water from God-knows-where in some plastic bottles and is trying to lure us to buy them. We hope Shanti water does not come from ditches near those shanties we have all over the city. One wonders whether after drinking Shanti, one will have "chiroshanti" (sleep from which you do not wake up)!

Strange foreign news
Many of us in Bangladesh laughed out loud reading an interesting foreign news item. It was about a minister in India paying a large sum as fine to the Indian railway for traveling without ticket with a group of supporters. Even after introducing himself as a minister, the stubborn guard refused to allow him to travel without ticket and fined him about ten thousand rupees!

Why did we laugh? Well, the poor minister should have visited Bangladesh and traveled with a sitting minister and his two hundred followers by train or airplane or expensive limousine or steamer or helicopter or elephant to learn a few tips on how to use and misuse state property and how to hold up traffic for hours. He would have also witnessed rolling of heads for protesting such misuse by any petty staff like that railway ticket collector.

Shahnoor Wahid is Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.