Editorial
Chief Adviser's role
Left so much to be desired
WE have reached a political dead-end. Only a stroke of super-ingenuity or luck or a miracle can have us wriggle out of the mire and ensure return on to the path of universally participated election within the given constitutional timeframe.Yesterday we wrote in our editorial columns that all the major political parties including the caretaker government had had their share of the blame for bringing the political differences between the major alliances to a cul-de-sac. But today we are going to concentrate on the failure of the chief of the caretaker government to act as a catalyst between the contending political parties so that one or the other major party would not boycott the election. That was not to be and the Awami League-led alliance has now declared itself out of the fray, something which seems fraught with all kinds of uncertainties. Whichever way one looks at the latest turn of events, the biggest apportionment of the blame has to be taken by the chief adviser of the caretaker government; for, it's bound to go down as the failure of the man in charge, the man at the helms of affairs with a mandate to fulfil. His failure has been threefold: first, he neither tried to nor could he gain the confidence of the Awami League-led alliance as a major partner in politics knowing full well that only a broad-based election is the essential guarantee for credibility of the polling exercise. On the contrary, every major step that he took was acceptable to one side and invariably rejected by the other. Secondly, his biggest failure lay in not being able to work collectively with his advisers; in fact, he sometimes appeared to work at cross purposes. He gave the impression of ploughing a partisan furrow and that too with sometimes lack of transparency. Thirdly, he has failed to depoliticise the administration left by the erstwhile BNP-led alliance government. We learn that by keeping 272 officials allegedly loyal to the BNP camp totally untouched, the caretaker government's so-called exercise for depoliticisation has been wound up. From the ministries to the field level the reshuffling has been, if anything, negligible. The whole concept of the caretaker government rests on the ethos of neutrality and by not unambiguously upholding the same, to our mind, the caretaker chief has seemingly done disservice to his obligations.
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