brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

Police banned all political gatherings in Bangladesh’s capital as a major political alliance plans to paralyze the capital with a massive strike starting Sunday to press for election reforms.

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police said Saturday it has banned “processions, rallies, demonstrations, sieges, sit-ins and blockades” as well as carrying arms, sticks, oars, explosives and other potential weapons.

The ban came after the alliance led by Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina said Saturday it would choke roads and rail links with sit-ins to press for the resignation of election officials accused of bias.

“We have no other option but to go for street protests,” alliance spokesman Abdul Jalil told reporters Saturday.”We have given time to act, but our demands are not met”.

Obaidul Quader, another alliance spokesman, said protesters would peacefully gather on Sunday at about 24 spots in the capital, Dhaka.

“Our protests will be peaceful,” Quader said.

The alliance has been demanding removal of the Chief Election Commissioner M.A. Aziz and his three deputies, accusing them of favoring former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s four-party coalition. Aziz denied the allegation.

Zia’s alliance is backing Aziz.

Sunday’s protests will come after less than two weeks after deadly political riots over an alleged attempt to rig the upcoming election left at least 27 people dead across the country.

A Burmese ferry with passengers onboard was hijacked by a gang of Bangladeshis on the 8th of November, 2006, report local and official Burmese sources.

Around 6:30 p.m. on the day, the gang boarded the ferry at San Pae Bin Rin Village and took control of the vessel – steering it to unknown location, said local source relaying information from a Burmese official.

The ferry operates between Maungdaw and Taungbro on the Naff River, which marks the border between Burma and Bangladesh, and San Pae Bin Rin on the Naff River opposite Bangladesh’s Nila Village.

A border security official from Burma reported that a high-ranking official from the Burmese Immigration Department in Taungbro is among the kidnapped passengers – most of whom are local public officers.

Currently, a team of Burmese officers is visiting local areas, including Rakhaing villages on the Bangladesh side of the border, to investigate the hijacked ferry.

The loot from onboard the ferry is estimated to be worth about 10 million Burmese kyats.

At the time of the hijacking, troops from the San Pae Bin Rin Nasaka outpost fired some shots in an attempt to get the ferry to stop. The hijackers still managed to escape to Bangladesh.

There have been no demands for ransom money for any of the kidnapped victims

“The state of non-happening is once again strung together by the beads of rhetoric. But it no longer sparkles as in the olden days to cover the dark patches of national failures.

Nothing possibly could be worse than what it is today. Only doom can beat it all. Hence optimism fights back in a pitch dark tunnel of an unrewarding politics that holds little light at the end of it. Or it may as well be a blind tunnel with no way to go. We are just in the middle of it singly, collectively, and as a nation.

If the flower of democracy has wilted before it could blossom, we have no tears to shed for it. Because it hardly existed even in its distorted frame.”

(Enayetullah Khan; Holiday, March 1975)

THE Berlin-based Transparency International has just announced the findings of its annual survey on perception of corrupt practices for 2006. It has presented its report to the press. Transparency International obtains data on corruption from their counterpart agencies in countries concerned. A sort of global approach is adopted for finding causes and effects of corruption and encouraging concerned quarters in the countries to adopt corrective measures.

The survey conducted by the Transparency International covered all countries in the world. Out of 163 countries, nearly a half have been stated to remain engulfed by unbridled corruption. Corrupt practices are adopted by the members of the upper echelon of the society, mainly politicians and bureaucrats. They do so to augment their earnings through misappropriation of public resources and thereby depriving the people at large. The burden of corrupt practices falls upon the people, who cannot take corrective measures against corrupt elements.

As reported, Haiti has replaced Bangladesh as the most corrupt country in the world. In the years since 2001 the blemish of being the number one corrupt country fell upon Bangladesh. Transparency International Bangladesh under the leadership of Prof Muzaffar Ahmed collected data on corrupt actions in government agencies for TI and presented its findings before the press.

It is worth noting that a Minister of the immediate past government asserted that the report of the Transparency International is not based upon correct facts and objective data. As against that, a leader of the opposition alliance stated that the previous government paid money to the global agency to project Bangladesh as one that has come out of the position of the most corrupt country in the world.

As it is, corrupt practices have global dimensions and are there in developed countries, which optimise their benefits from deals with other countries. The members of the bureaucracy and political leaders have, over the decades, had exposure to different institutions in developed countries. They turned quite ambitious for earning more to become richer. These powerful quarters opt for underhand deals while in office and join political parties after retirement. The Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) should be made effective to take punitive action against corrupt elements to check corruption and help restore the image of the nation.