Staff correspondent
The government must come out of the system where ‘winners take all’ and take the opposition political parties in confidence in the greater interest of the country, said jurists, retired bureaucrats and former advisers at a discussion on Saturday.
‘The newly elected government, which has come [to power] with an overwhelming mandate, has the responsibility to take measures so that democracy does not falter again,’ former adviser to the caretaker government Wahiduddin Mahmud said at the launch of a book in Dhaka. ‘In a multi-party democracy, you must take them [opposition] on board.’
‘A system without giving room for the opposition will become unstable… reversals will be there… and it is possible,’ he said.
Mahmud, a professor of economics, wondered whether stories behind the recurrent shifting of stances by the interim government would have surfaced. ‘The caretaker government was not monolithic. It changed its colours time and again. I do not understand why it happened,’ he said.
The University Press Limited organised the programme to review the book, Democracy in Crisis, by the prime minister’s adviser Mashiur Rahman at the National Press Club.
Former Dhaka University vice-chancellor Emajuddin Ahamed said, ‘Democracy did not work well in the past, and it is not working well as the opposition is not taken into confidence.’
Dhaka University pro-vice chancellor Harun-or-Rashid said, ‘“Only majority” rule must not be there.’
‘Opposition parties must not be taken as political enemies. They must be taken into confidence. The country will, otherwise, be in trouble,’ he said.
Barrister Amirul Islam asked the parliament to make the president, Iajuddin Ahmed, accountable.
‘It is an obligation of the parliament to make the president accountable… He [Iajuddin] is the one who needs to be accountable for the happenings before January 11, 2007,’ he said. ‘The nation must know what prompted the president to make a number of decisions in those days.’
‘Whoever becomes president has no accountability. [Former presidents Khandakar] Mushtaq [Ahmed], Ziaur Rahman and [HM] Ershad were not accountable to anybody… If this parliament fails to make Iajuddin accountable, the same thing will be repeated in future,’ he said. ‘There will be another Iajuddin and [Abdul] Aziz to repeat the mistakes.’
He also stressed the need for publishing thorough reports on the activities and failures of the chief adviser to the immediate-past caretaker government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, and the incumbent Election Commission.
‘If we [nation] fail to make them accountable and strengthen the institutions…, we will be continuing to blame the politicians,’ he said.
Syed Abdus Samad, former principal secretary to the Awami League-led 1996–2000 government, said, ‘It is fashionable to blame politicians, but politicians alone cannot fail.’
He said failure was not autonomous, it was induced, with a purpose.
Almost all the discussants praised Mashiur Rahman, also a retired civil bureaucrat, for presenting an ‘objective analysis’ of the political events of the past two years.
Mashiur Rahman said, ‘There is a discernible pattern of institutional failure. The organisations of the government and the republic fail, and instead of penalising the office-holders, their failure is used to justify the curtailment or confiscation of the citizen’s rights.’
‘The logic is perverse — The office-holders are right and the citizens are wrong,’ he said.
Courtesy: newagebd.com
