::: New Year Special :::

Looking back at 2010

Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan

Amirul Rajiv

HOw quickly the year has passed, and with it the decade too? It was only the other day that we celebrated the emergence of a new century. And now we have already spent the first decade of the 21st Century and landed into the cusp of its second.

Although we were spared the wrath of natural calamities in 2010, there were many manmade ones that took toll of human lives like the Nimtali fire as well as the many cases of death of workers due to fire in RMG factories. The RMG sector continued to be ailed by continual unrest.

2010 was a sedentary year in the context of Bangladesh, with the political front being hogged by the ruling party and the opposition scurrying for cover, with the government denying them any political space either in the parliament for whatever little time the opposition chose to attend it, or on the streets. But the country still had to contend with the aftereffects of Aila that hit a part of the country's coastal belt in 2009. The government's post-Aila long-term efforts have floundered badly and the rehabilitation programme has left much to be re-planned and redone to save the victims from further distress.

Three very significant events marked the judicial calendar of Bangladesh. The first was that the trial of Bangabandhu killing was brought to a conclusion after 35 years with the hanging of five of the convicts. Secondly, the Appellate Division's upholding the High Court's verdict declaring the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution illegal, preventing the possibility of intervention of supra constitutional forces in country's politics in the future, and thirdly, the setting up of the International Crimes Tribunal.

In Bangladesh it is always interesting times, with or without politics, and with or without the opposition joining the parliament. End of 2010 will see the ruling Grand Coalition led by the Awami League complete two years in office. But if the year started with a peaceful note, having been spared political flux and the attendant distress of political instability, it ended on a very torrid one, the heat being generated by the government's decision to evict Khaleda Zia from her cantonment residence of nearly forty years, and the leader of the opposition suddenly finding herself, according to her own words, homeless overnight.

Begum Zia's situation illustrated two things. First, the logic of civility is far from being fostered, let alone ingrained, as a part of our culture, more so in the case of political relationship. Secondly, the characterisation of deprivation is highly subjective. It is not absolute and remains a relative term both in the economic and psychological context.

In politics it was business as usual, which means that the parliament was left for greater part of the year without the Opposition, who, out of its own wisdom, thought it better to abdicate the responsibility that the nearly 32 percent voters had reposed on it, preferring movement on the streets to driving their points home on the floor of the parliament. That was, however, in keeping with the traditions of the past since the reemergence of democracy in the country in 1991. All of the more than one hundred bills passed up till now in the parliament have been without the participation of the opposition.

Amirul Rajiv

Our hopes were raised when the BNP joined the parliament in the first session of the year 2010. But its participation was more short-lived than our hopes when it decided not to join the budget session of the parliament and have remained out since. Admittedly, things were livened up by the presence of the BNP, brief the period may have been, albeit with intermittent walkouts; and walkouts are better than boycott of the parliament, return to which the BNP has made conditional on certain conditions of the party being met by the Speaker / the government.

Interestingly, the number of conditions that the BNP had started with in 2009 has increased by the day, most of which have little to do with politics or directly related with the interest of the people, and many are beyond the capacity of the Speaker to meet. To start with it was the number of seats in the front row, to which have been added several more since then, including demand for withdrawal of cases lodged against BNP leaders.

But there is perhaps some merit in the criticism leveled against the Speaker by the BNP that he was less than non-partisan given that not a single call attention notice of the opposition was allowed to be tabled, and that it had only one representation in the constitutional reform committee that was approved on the last day of the budget session.

On the student front, the year ended on the same high note as it started, with internal bickering leading to violence among Chattra League groups for control of the turf in various educational institutions. In fact, infightings within Chattra League have caused more casualties than inter-party student wing clashes. So was the case with other appendages of the Awami League, who went on unhindered in their tender-grabbing and other rent seeking activities. The Chattra League was also seen to be active in anti-hartal activities when they engaged themselves in foiling the BNP-called general strike at the end of June, and where the police chose to remain a mere spectator.

As for hartal, it seems that it is back again to create problems for the public. While the entire of 2009 and first half of 2010 had gone without hartal, we suffered three, of which two came in quick succession, in the space of a fortnight, at the latter part of the year. The first was called to protest, according to the BNP, among other things, failure of the government to arrest rise of prices of essentials, and deteriorating law and order, while the last general strike was a sequel to the eviction of Khaleda Zia. And that could not have come at a worst time for the public, called as it was only a couple of days prior to the Eid-ul-Azha holidays.

The trial of war criminals, after some fits and starts, can now be considered underway. The government in March formed a three-member International Crimes Tribunal and an investigation agency and appointed prosecutors to bring the war criminals to justice. The Tribunal issued its first arrest warrants against four top leaders of Jamaat in July. However, the idea did meet with some resistance from Jamaat when it moved the High Court for quashing of the proceedings of the tribunal against its chief Motiur Rahman Nizami, which was rejected. The HC has also rejected two other writ petitions of Jamaat leaders challenging the legality of the appointment of HC judges in the ICT and the first amendment to the constitution which provides for trial of war criminals, the ICT Act and trial proceedings under this act. However, we could have done without the confusion regarding the working of the Court, created by uncalled for and unnecessary comments of some bigwigs in the government from time to time. It very nearly became a party rather than a national affair.

In the diplomatic front the Bangladesh-India relationship turned a new corner. After five years of what can at best be termed lukewarm relationship during the 4-party alliance regime, the visit of our Prime Minister to India in January of 2010 prepared the groundwork for closer economic, and indeed strategic, cooperation with India. The joint communiqué that laid down several areas of cooperation between the two countries was severely criticised by the opposition for what they called giving everything but getting nothing in return.

On ground, everything was made ready to provide India with overland transit facility, having already agreed to provide it with additional facilities in terms of carrying heavier cargo over river routes. According to a high official of the finance ministry the government was very eager to reach an agreement with India very soon on the issue of transit and transshipment. The finance minister had told the press in November that a cost benefit analyses of allowing transit and transshipment to India, Nepal and Bhutan had been going on since last February and that it would be ready in two months. There seemed to be, however, some confusion as to the methods and means of charging India for the services to be provided for overland transit facility. The scope of land transit, we have been given to understand by the government, will be enhanced to allow Nepal and Bhutan to use Indian territory up to our ports. However, we are yet to be told exactly as to what might be the annual return to Bangladesh from the services to be provided.

In keeping with the policy of not allowing its territory for anti-Indian activities by Indian rebel groups, the Bangladesh government, according to media reports, rounded up and handed over a number of ULFA and other Indian insurgent group members to India. This has, one presumes, helped address the prime concern of India regarding its Northeast insurgents. As for the issues related to Bangladesh's concern, like trade imbalance or the Teesta water sharing, nothing palpable has been done, except exchanging rhetoric.

But, in spite of the improved bilateral relationship, the border incidents were more than mere aberrations. The continued killing of Bangladeshis by Indian BSF turned out to be an irritant, which went on in spite of the unilateral moratorium declared by the Indian government in 2010 on BSF firing. The figures are really alarming, and there are grounds to believe that border management between the two countries leaves much to be addressed. While the BSF call these people cattle smugglers and miscreants, some wonder why no phensydyl smugglers are ever killed or caught with smuggled goods by the BSF? That the instances of Indian civilians intruding inside Bangladesh territory, and in some cases the BSF doing the same, have not precipitated into serious incidents is due only to BDR's (now BGB) extreme restraint, which some detractors call deliberate inaction.

Two things that the government was hard put to contend with at home were power crisis and galloping prices of essential. As usual, the syndicate got the better of the consumers with the government quite hapless to do very much for them. The commerce minister's protestations notwithstanding, it is quite evident that unless the manipulators are made examples of, the market will continue to be seller dominated. That said, the agricultural sector remained quite stable with the farmers receiving adequate incentives both in terms of inputs as well market price for their products.

Power outage continued to be the most vexing problem. While people had very little to grumble about the diversion of electricity for irrigation, it was the off-season outage that people found unbearable. No large-scale plant was set up in the past year although the government claims to have added nearly 1000 MW during that time.

Traffic problems continued to cause the Dhaka dwellers tremendous woes. There have been several plans on the anvil, and work on highflying ones like elevated expressway may start in 2011. But two very interesting proposals, one, of all the people by the Speaker himself, to address the problem, merits mention. There may be some logic in the Finance Minister's suggestions of controlling private vehicles, but the Speakers' idea, to enhance the price of CNG to address traffic problem takes the cake. One would hope that he would not be asked to proffer any suggestion on how to reduce poverty!

Government's soft-pedaling on local government issues continued despite its commitment. In fact, granting the MPs the authority to participate in local governance has belied its promise to make the local government more effective. The municipality elections due next year have added lot of vibes in the political front.

Two issues continued to cause embarrassment to the government - human rights and corruption. In spite of the setting up of the Human Rights Commission, a very positive step toward addressing the issue, custodial deaths and deaths by crossfire severely dented the country's human rights record. And the issue was put it in perspective by an ex-chief justice when he commented that the executive branch of government possessed neither the skills nor the power to protect human rights.

In this regard RAB came under international scrutiny with some western human rights watchdog calling it the 'government's killer squad'. The situation was made murkier with some ministers not only denying that the law enforcing agencies indulged in extra judicial killings, some also went so far as to suggest that crossfire killings may perhaps be necessary in the future to maintain law and order.

The anti-corruption drive literally stumbled with the commission boss himself calling it a toothless tiger. The TIB report based on households survey published at the end of December created great furor. It showed the judiciary to be the most corrupt among government and non-government service providers in the country. Not surprisingly, the anti-corruption watchdog came under sever criticism from government ministers with one of them calling the TIB report an attempt to derail the trial of the war criminals. But surprisingly, it is in the government that majority of people had reposed their faith to combat corruption as was revealed in the Global Corruption Barometer 2010 survey on people's perception of corruption, conducted for the first time worldwide by the Transparency International.

The law and order aspect left much to be desired in spite of the ministers' claim to the contrary. However the government's counterterrorism effort was rewarded due to its proactive actions whereby a large number of extremists were rounded up by the law enforcing agencies along with huge quantities of IEDs and small arms and ammunition. The security forces also managed to arrest a few foreign extremists who had been living in the country under local patronage.

The most serious threat to our security, climate change, has been addressed somewhat through the agreements reached at Cancun. Although nothing dramatic occurred in Cancun, there was a conscious effort to avoid the mistakes of Copenhagen. It all depends on how well the Green Fund is utilized to mitigate the effects of climate change.

As always, we end the year 2010 with the hope that things in 2011 will be better.

Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan, ndc, psc (Retd) is Editor, Defence and Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.