::: New Year Special :::

In the year that was

Syed Badrul Ahsan

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THE beginning of a new year is always cause for a return to the one that has just passed into history. And the return is fundamentally a time for reflection on what has been and what the consequences of the year now gone have been. There are all the ramifications of human action, some only to be predicted and falling into place, some others defined by unintended consequences. In Bangladesh, where politics has been a major contributing factor to life for ages, it was political action which in the broad sense continued to underscore individual and collective life in the year 2010.

It all began on an encouraging note, in January through five of the assassins of the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, being brought to justice. Close to thirty five years after the gruesome happenings of 15 August 1975, the nation appeared to reinvent itself through being reminded of the lessons of history . . . that while history could be pushed off the rails for sometime, it could not be put out of circulation altogether. History always has a way of coming back. And that was the truth which dawned in January last year. 'Never again!' That was the way the nation breathed, in relief that rule of law, for all the battering it had gone through, was nevertheless potent enough to stride back into Bengali life.

And the law was again was what we saw being upheld in early February of the year. The higher judiciary in simple manner and yet in a move that would have a bearing on the future, threw out legal challenges to the repeal of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution that had earlier been decreed by the law in 2005. Now, in decisive finality, the judiciary informed the nation that what passed for government between August 1975 and April 1979 had been but a deviation from the law, indeed from all norms of decency and morality. Thus, at one stroke, the regimes of Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed, Justice Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem and General Ziaur Rahman were dismissed for the aberrations that they had been. In simple political and legal parlance, the country was told that every act included in the Fifth Amendment, every bit of notoriety that it encompassed (read here the Indemnity Ordinance and the cavalier move to undermine the basic secular character of the Constitution) was now irrelevant and had been thrown out the window.

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That was how we went back, in a big way, to our historical moorings as a nation. It was a rediscovery of the old ethos that had propelled Bengalis into a War of Liberation in 1971. That the state of Bangladesh belonged to all, that every citizen was equal before the law in terms of his religious beliefs and political convictions, that the republic was a bedrock of secularism, was reinstated by the dismissal of the Fifth Amendment. Having been an albatross around our necks, it had now been cast off, a hint of our new-found belief that government as it was meant to be back in the days when we waged war against the enemy was making a comeback in our lives. The awareness dawned yet once more that the country belonged to us, that we belonged to it as our ancestors had laid their own claim to it. That was the sentiment, across the country.

And yet there was the knowledge that things ought to have been better. The Jatiyo Sangsad remained rather dysfunctional, in the sense that the opposition appeared determined to stay away from it. Politics of the confrontational sort remained, indeed appeared to gain higher levels of bellicosity through a deepening of old antagonisms. If the opposition demonstrated an absence of electoral responsibility, was willing to ignore nationwide calls for it to return to parliament, the ruling party seemed to match it in terms of hurling as much of the abrasive as it could. The note of fresh hope with which the nation had begun its journey back to democratic politics was fast becoming conspicuous by its absence. Adversarial politics remained in full play, made intense by the legal and political battle over Begum Khaleda Zia's occupancy of her residence in the cantonment. In the end, she was compelled to vacate the premises that had been her home since the mid 1970s. The scratches that have come to politics by way of the episode will not likely go away soon. The opposition leader's tears before the media, the perceived insensitivity of the powers that be to her plight, the hartal called by her party on the issue, the heated debate arising out of the incident --- all of these left a bad taste in the mouth.

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If this was darkness, there was light at the end of a different tunnel. The government's assertive stance on the issue of war criminals engaged an entire nation in efforts to bring to justice those who had collaborated with the Pakistan occupation army in 1971. The setting up of an international war crimes tribunal, the moves to frame the relevant laws under which the accused would be tried, the efforts toward gathering evidence were all looked upon as a positive measure. But, yes, there were the complaints too. The government's failure to indict suspected war criminals in speedy fashion, the feeling that it was not quite being able to plug the holes in the laws under which the alleged war criminals would be tried somehow raised questions about the overall preparations of the authorities where placing the war criminals on trial was concerned. Additionally, questions were raised about the ability of the government to complete the trial process before its term in office came to an end. Already a minister has gone on record with his comment that the government expects to complete the war crimes trial by 2014, which happens to be the time when it will either be beginning a fresh term in power or will see itself being replaced by a new government. The good news on the war crimes front was the arrest of suspected war criminal and BNP standing committee member Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury in the pre-dawn hours of 16 December, the nation's Victory Day.

The year was made notable in other ways as well, especially with the High Court wading into areas where government ought to have. With a series of directives issued on various subjects of public interest, the High Court made it clear that the government was failing in its responsibility of ensuring citizens' welfare, that it needed to take corrective action if governance was to get into a proper track.

And that was the way things were. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina travelled to India, Japan, the United States, Belgium and other global spots. Begum Zia, as the year drew to a close, hopped over to China. At home, the communications minister got into trouble with a parliamentary committee over a train accident in Narsingdi in early December. The finance minister served the warning that privately owned cars might not be allowed on the roads unless they carried their full capacity of passengers. In December, a series of Transparency International Bangladesh reports on corruption in public services, particularly in the judiciary and the police, made the government go ballistic.

And, this morning, the day begins in the soft tones of a January day.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.