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Hasina assures better life, seeks cooperation from Khaleda
Special Coprrespondent
Winning a landslide victory in the general election of December 29, Awami League President Sheikh Hasina said her government's first tasks would be to bring down the prices of essentials within people's reach and alleviate poverty. And in this mission, she sought cooperation from her political archrival BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia.
Sheikh Hasina also vowed to turn the country into a prosperous, peaceful, modern and information technology- based 'Digital Bangladesh' and also ensure rule of law and good governance in the country.
The grand alliance led by Awami League won a landslide victory with 262 of 299 seats securing a total of 48 per cent vote. The coalition led by BNP won only 32 seats with 32.74 per cent of votes cast in the ninth parliamentary polls.
The international election observers are unanimous in their view that the December 29 parliamentary election, which heralded Bangladesh's return to democracy after two years of military-backed rule, was fair and credible one. The voting was most peaceful and spontaneous, observers said at different press conferences in Dhaka and urged the opposition to accept the results.
In the first post-election press conference at Bangladesh- China Friendship Conference Centre on December 31, Sheikh Hasina thanked the Caretaker Government and the Election Commission for holding a free, fair and credible election and the international communities that assisted the Election Commission and the government in holding the election.
However, BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia in her first public reaction after the national election termed it a "stage-managed election". The Election Commission only announced a staged result set earlier," Khaleda said in a press briefing after holding emergency meeting of the BNP national standing committee. She also alleged that vote rigging was "unprecedented"
The winner Sheikh Hasina, like her predecessor, urged the opposition to accept the polls results. She urged all political parties to shun the past tradition of politics of vengeance and conflicts and work together for the betterment of the country.
"I will not weigh the opposition by its seats in parliament. I believe in parliamentary democracy opposition is part of the government. We will uphold the opposition's roles including positive criticism and suggestions to keep parliament active," Hasina said
Hasina expressed her wish to share power, including cabinet positions, with the opposition. She offered the opposition posts of Deputy Speaker and chairmen of a few parliamentary standing committees.
Asking party men to stay calm and show tolerance, she urged all to work for the nation. "We do not believe in politics of vengeance. We want to put an end to the politics of confrontation and present a new political culture to the nation," she said.
Sheikh Hasina assured of a better life for the people referring to her previous tenure as Prime Minister. She said "Awami League was in power from 1996 to 2001 and that period was a golden period for Bangladesh in all aspects. So, we commit to the people that we want to make sure that they have a better life."
Proposing formation of joint task forces among the South Asian countries for combined action against terrorism, Sheikh Hasina wants to establish Bangladesh as the most peaceful nation in the region.
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Absurd poll result deepens political crisis
M. Shahidul Islam
It was too good to believe. Observers were stunned, victors themselves dismayed, and the world around lost language to mutter comments or analyze the event's contours. The only news in the global media about the latest Bangladesh poll is the news itself. No elaboration, no analysis.
The reasons are obvious. From a vibrant multi-party democracy that Bangladesh was until the declaration of emergency rules in January 2007, it has suddenly relegated into a democratic dictatorship. The outcome of the December 29 polling has virtually reinstated a one-party-system in the country, as did the election of 1973 in which the Awami League (AL) won 293 seats.
And, had there been no sharing of seats with the JP (Ershad) and some other parties, AL's total seats could have hit the similar matrix this time too.
That is why the much-awaited polls have generated a new crisis and further widened political cleavages in a country locked for too long into a seemingly perpetual rivalry between two diverse political camps that have had almost equal number of voters; the BNP often having an upper edge of few percentage points over the AL.
Back to BKSAL?
The result was so unusual that history bears no resemble to it and the memory of the single party BKSAL keeps reverberating. People are also seeking reminiscences with the 1973 polls following which the AL regime decimated all oppositions.
That leads many observers to question whether the BNP had blundered by participating in the polls in the first place?
BNP insiders, however, say, they could have chosen not to, but did not due to the party's inherent commitment toward a multi party pluralistic democratic dispensation which the party's founding leader, Ziaur Rahman, had introduced after the one party dictatorial role of Sheikh Mujib came to an abrupt end following a bloody midnight massacre in August 1975; conducted by a group of freedom fighter officers of the army who had joined the war of liberation under Mujib's call.
That was then, this is now. The situation has changed over the decades, and, in the subsequent polling, the AL transmuted into a party of toleration (winning 76 seats in the 1986 election (boycotted by BNP) and 62 in 2001). What did not change is the AL's penchant for monopolizing politics. The conspiracy to destroy the BNP thus went unabated, this time in concert with a military command that the BNP arrogantly handpicked by passing many experienced senior officers.
Time is ripe for the military to do the soul searching and ask: How credible is an election if its very outcome seems incredible even to the victors. And, if there were rigging, why it has to be in such a massive way?
The absurd poll outcome has shattered all dreams and pushed the nation on the verge of an internal convulsion, as was desired by regional and global mentors.
Betrayal with history
Allegations - with ample evidence - are floating to prove that the rug of the promised label playing field was removed from under BNP's feet once the party's participation in the election was ensured after a protracted negotiation. Added to the emerging signs of massive election engineering, this election may prove as a catalyst for change for the worst.
The BNP's winning of only 29 seats denotes betrayal with history. Observers at home and abroad want a head-to-toe investigation of the voting modalities, role of election officials and the environment under which it took place.
For, historically, even in the most fair and credible election of 1991, BNP won 168 seats while it chose to sit in the opposition after the 1996 election in which it only managed to win 116 seats, against AL's 146.
As well, this election result has defied our inherent political realism. Scratch the back of every Bangladeshi and you smell either BNP or AL. That being a fact, latest polls' outcome could not have been so worse for the BNP unless it was doctored to be so. And, this sad anti-climax having occurred with respect to the BNP alone - which now has only as many seats as the marginalized JP (Ershad) of former military dictator HM Ershad - people have the right to ask, why?
Geopolitical backdrop
One plausible reason could be, like 1973, the latest election too occurred under an autocratic 'army-backed- foreign- installed- rule' of a caretaker government that had lost its constitutional mandate only 90 days after coming to office and became unsuccessful in almost all the reform measures it had undertaken ever since
Another reason is the geopolitical backdrop under which the recent polls took place. As more facts are being exhumed to ascertain truth, we must not fail to reiterate that, since before the botched election of January 2007, there was a concerted move to bring the AL to power by any means.
That is what has led to the imposition of emergency rules and the repeated onslaughts by security forces against the BNP in particular.
It also seems clear now that the CG's limited onslaught against AL was a mere ruse to pose as a balancer, as is another major fact: The outcome of the current poll has made both India and the US happy, the two countries that are fighting the so called war on terror in unison and desperately seek Dhaka's allegiance to it; not only to fight the so called Islamists, but to circumvent China geopolitically.
Worst still, the poll outcome in Bangladesh has increased the risk of an Indo-Pak war due to the AL's unwavering loyalty toward India and the necessity of India preserving a force capability along the Indo-Bangladesh borders during any regional war having withered.
Replica of Pakistan, Afghanistan
As there is nothing called domestic compulsions in this turbulent time of intense global and regional brinkmanship surrounding the Muslim-predominant countries, the election outcome is also a devised replica of what happened in elections in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Iraq story needs no repetition, and the dynamics of Mid-East politics is quite different than what is shaping South Asia's destiny. On October 9, 2004, Afghan puppet Hamid Karzai won the election with 55.4% of the votes, which was three times more than any other candidate. The election was overseen by the Joint Electoral Management Body composed of foreign dignitaries.
Following accusations of fraud and declaration by at least 15 candidates to boycott the ballot, the UN announced it would set up a three-person independent panel to investigate the charges of irregularities. Nothing happened afterwards.
In Pakistan, the US decided to get rid of General Musharraf prior to February 2008 election, resulting in the PPP and ML(N) winning a landslide with 215 of 272 national assembly seats. For Bangladesh, the persons chosen were Hasina-Ershad duo, like the Zardari-Newaz pair in Pakistan.
The only mistake the foreign mentors made was in not doing enough home work about the fact that, Bangladeshis are neither analogous to the feudalistic Pakistanis, nor to the war-lord- ruled Afghanis.
The fallout
The fallouts are, therefore, palpable. A senior BNP source confided to this scribe that the BNP-BJI compact may not join the parliament as it is meaningless to be party to a lame duck opposition while the treasury is empowered to do things with impunity.
He said, insisting on anonymity, "The AL has in the past fiddled with the constitution with only a single majority (like the suspension of the 1975 Indemnity Ordinance), and, the 27 seats the BNP had won are not even enough to cover assignments in various parliamentary committees."
Other BNP-insiders claim the votes were rigged disproportionately to the level not predicted by anyone and the administration was dead set to wipe out the BNP from the political landscape. They say there existed continuous liaison between the AL leadership and the administration in order to steer the polls' outcome toward a pre-designed blueprint.
While allegations are allegations until proven to be true, a number of tell-tale signs do lend credence to many of such assertions.
For example, Hasina warned her followers less than 48 hours prior to the polling day that money was being distributed to buy votes. Within hours, police launched a witch hunt across the country and arrested hundreds of BNP-BJI leaders and workers for allegedly buying votes. Police, however, did not arrest any AL person prior to, or during the polls, for any wrongdoing despite vote buying being a ubiquitous menace pervading across the political spectrum of the nation.
Hasina also accused the BNP of spending looted money to buy votes. Did BNP loot so little Takas that could buy only 27 seats? Did Hasina spend dollars or Rupees to buy almost the entire seats of the parliament? The culture of undermining and insulting the opposition being in the vein of Hasina, her desired election outcome turned into a major political malice.
Already signs of instability are lurking all around not only due to attack, beating, torching and killing of BNP activists by jubilant AL supporters in different parts of the country, BNP has also made public some other facts relating to polling irregularities and categorically accused some presiding officers of stuffing ballots. Added to it is the anger of an estimated one million or more voters of BNP-BJI stripe who failed to vote due to their names not being in the voters list.
There are also allegations that intelligence services have identified BNP-BJI voters prior to the polling and deliberately secluded them from the voting list.
Result null and void?
The combination of all these factors leads observers to believe that this election might turn null and void in the end. Earlier, BNP spokesperson Rizvi Ahmed said his party would challenge the poll result. Ahmed said there were incidents of ballot-rigging and forgery at 220 polling stations, including election officials registering fake votes. He also accused police of pressuring people to vote for Hasina's candidates and said his party has lodged formal complaints with the EC.
And, after 24 hours of reflection, BNP leader Khaleda Zia had reacted to the polling outcome with utmost disgust and anger. In the wee hours of December 30, Khaleda told journalists that the polls outcome was 'not acceptable.' Knowing her political and personal mettle, one can conclude her remarks as final and she is unlikely to wince.
While elaborating the reasons Khaleda said, "It's noticeable that 45 to 50 percent votes were cast by 12 noon and thereafter most of the polling centres were seen empty. But it was shown that about 90 percent votes were cast at those centres." Khaleda added, "Never in the past had there been such a grand forgery of votes." Khaleda further claimed of possessing evidence to prove the rigging and the irregularities.
Thus, the debate over the presence of 'ghost voters' in the pre-2001 voters list has been replaced by what one might call 'host voters.' "This time, those who were supposed to conduct polls (hosts) had voted for the boat symbol in a massive way," said one election observer.
That, however, does not obfuscate the commonsensical query of why rig in such a massive way. One explanation is: the CG has the habit of doing things in a high-profiled manner, only to unwind with disastrous outcome. For instance, its crusade against corruption was too massive and the nest was cast too wide. The end result was release of all those arrested for alleged corruption. Besides, fearing retribution from the BNP - as the pre-election trend indicated a BNP victory - the alleged rigging was designed in a manner to render BNP into a non-factor.
The medicine seems to have worked for now, but the patience may not survive. "How can a small country boat take the load of 262 passengers?" quips an observer. The 1973 landslide victory of the AL ended in disaster. Will this one be any different, is the buzz whizzing around.
Beginning of a crisis
The BNP is a party born out of the ashes of a bloody revolution. Every time it faces disintegration, it rises like a Phoenix. Now that the BNP-BJI may refrain from taking oath and joining the parliament, the situation will either compel the JP (Ershad) faction to play as official opposition, or cut short the life span of the coming parliament. Either way, the path is strewn with dangers.
The JP (Ershad) did not join the AL-led alliance to play as loyal opposition. Ershad had openly said he wanted to be the president of the country. Now that the AL alone has won absolute majority seats, it does not need JP (Ershad) support and the former dictator might either have to sit as loyal opposition in the parliament (if the BNP-BJI finally decide not to play the fake democracy game devised from beyond the country's border), or join Khaleda in the streets to cry for nation's salvation.
Either of the scenarios looks unavoidable amidst a burgeoning situation in which the BNP-BJI seats will fall vacant pursuant to Article 67 (1)(a) of the Constitution upon expiration of 30 days from the day of the first sitting of the parliament; if the elected MPs from those parties fail to make an oath in accordance with the Third Schedule of the Constitution.
Stay tune for episode two of this evolving drama.
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BNP goes on soul-searching, revitalising the party organisation
Abdur Rahman Khan
BNP, the big looser in the parliamentary polls, have started a soul searching terming the general elections of December 29 as a stage managed game.
It has asked the contesting candidates and the grassroots organizers to furnish the report about the irregularities and the election engineering at their local constituencies. It will help the party establish its claim against the election commission.
Although a large section of BNP leaders and workers are favouring a total rejection of the election results and an extreme move like refraining from taking oaths as parliament members, BNP policymakers are still reviewing the situation in consideration with the changed political scenario and the pro-active suggestions from well-wishers.
Begum Khaldea Zia has taken the initiative to exchange views with different groups for consolidating her ideas about the future course of action. She is holding meetings with the standing committee leaders, the four party alliance leaders and the well-wishers from various professional groups.
She is likely to hold meetings with the party nominees and active organizers of national executive committee to get a clear view about the debacle and calculate her next organizational steps. It is quite natural that she would go for overhauling the party organization that suffered enormous damage during five years in power and another two years under suppression of a military-backed interim government.
Suggestions are there that Begum Zia should reactivate the party organization from the grassroots level up to the standing committee by picking up honest, credible and dynamic organizers. She must clean the house by discarding the old and obsolete leaders, and opportunists masquerading as reformists.
In the consultation meetings, party well wishers suggested that, since a large number of almost 35 per cent of voters of the country voted for her, Begum Zia must join the parliament, play effective role as a leader of the opposition and fight for the causes of the people inside and outside the parliament. It was also suggested that the party should setup an active and effective research wing to provide intellectual inputs for political actions. A media monitoring and campaign wing also may be developed to monitor and analyse the public opinion trend as reflected in the media and also provide media inputs for political campaign.
"Just keep patience, keep a watch on the fabulous commitments made by Awami League and expose the breaches and violations before the media and in the house and outside to help people understand the situation", suggested the intellectuals who met her at her Gulshan office on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, BNP is likely to activate its legal aid service to lend support to party workers and the members of the public in case of any human rights violation anywhere in the country. Begum Zia also came to know about the post-election violence flared up in different places targeting leaders, workers and supporters of BNP and its alliances.
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Post-polls violence flares up: Opposition supporters targeted
Special Correspondent
Despite call to her party workers from the grand alliance leader Sheikh Hasina to stay calm and show tolerance and the Caretaker Government's precaution against post-poll violence, reports of violence, attacks and arsons in different parts of the country are pouring in to the newspapers.
In the violent acts, supporters of BNP, the defeated party, are the victims.
At least four people were reported killed and over 200 persons were injured countrywide in polls-related violence on Tuesday, a day after the national election. In Pabna and Sujanagar two BNP workers were killed in post-election clashes.
In Pabna sadar upazila, a post-polls attack left Shahabuddin dead and two injured. Local BNP leader Habibur Rahman Tota claimed all three were four-party alliance workers.
According to local police, the attackers forced their way into Ali's house at around 8am and stabbed and wounded him. Shahabuddin died after he was rushed to the local hospital The attackers also committed arson in three houses including Ali's, and two others. Alauddin and Nazrul were injured during this time.
Sujanagar police chief Azizul Islam said that BNP supporters Abul Kalam Azad and Tokai Miah had been attacked by Awami League men. Tokai Miah died as he tried to flee the scene. Abul Kalam was beaten up.
In another Pabna incident, AL supporters stabbed Manikhat Union Parishad chairman and BNP leader Abdul Hai. He was rushed to Dhaka for treatment. BNP Pabna district president Sirajul Islam Sarder and general secretary Habibur Rahman Tota blamed Awami League for the occurrences.
In Bagerhat, the house of Khan Abul Kalam, a UP chairman of Teliganti union and a BNP leader, was attacked early Tuesday and family members were injured.
The injured were initially admitted to Bagerhat Sadar Hospital and later some of them were transferred to Khulna Medical College Hospital.
Kalam told reporters that the attack was carried out at his house as he had worked in favour of the four-party alliance in the election. He claimed that some 20/25 AL activists carried out the attack.
Police said they had visited the scene and were taking measures after investigation.
In Moulavi Bazar an attack on Rajghat Tea Garden Workers' Village in Srimangal after announcement of poll results left some 20 workers including women and children injured.
In Noakhali, eight people were injured in a terrorist attack at Bargaon village under Sonaimuri upazila on Tuesday afternoon. The severely injured were admitted to Sonaimuri Upazila Health Complex.
In Chittagong, Bashkhali upazila, three four-party alliance supporters were hurt in an attack by AL workers. The injured are 'Mahfuz', his mother Anwara Begum and Amir Hamza. Anwara and Amir are taking treatment in a local health complex
In Panchagarh, 10 supporters of the BNP and the AL sustained injuries in a clash in Shalbahan union in Tentulia Upazila. Following the clash, police arrested eight BNP supporters from the scene.
In Kuliarchar of Kishoreganj district, a local BNP worker named Nitya Lal Das was stabbed and his house vandalised. Officer-in-charge of Kuliarchhar Police Station Ahammad Hossain said Abul Monsur Rubel, the younger brother of local unit of AL president Abul Hossain Liton, led the attack. Nitya Lal Das was sent to Dhaka Pongu Hospital.
In some other incidents in Kuliachhar and Kotiadi Upazila, some 12 BNP supporters were injured and some of their houses vandalised.
In Jessore, district BNP general secretary Kazi Monirul Huda alleged at a press conference on Wednesday that supporters of the AL had swooped on their leaders and supporters in all the six constituencies of the district.
He claimed that some 20 leaders and activists were injured.
Meanwhile, BNP has alleged that the "criminals of the winning party" are assaulting its supporters across the country amid reports of continued post-election clashes between Awami League and BNP supporters in places on Wednesday, which left scores injured.
"The winning party activists are attacking our leaders and supporters, they are keeping our supporters under lock and key, they are threatening our supporters at their homes," BNP office secretary Rizvi Ahmed said at a press briefing at party chairperson's Gulshan office on Wednesday.
"Such post-election incidents bear bad signs. On one hand, the leader of the winning party is saying that she would establish peace and the criminal activists of her party are attacking us, on the other," Rizvi said.
Police not taking case
Defeated BNP candidate from Mirpur, Barrister Rafiqul Islam Mia, said his supporters came under attack on Monday night, but police refused to record the case when they had gone to the police station.
An activist of Pallabi Doaripara unit of BNP's youth front, Khokon, and Liton, a worker of the labour wing's Mirpur unit, were presented at the briefing with parts of their bodies wrapped in surgical gauge.
They did not speak at the briefing but the leaders said those two had been assaulted by the workers of AL's youth front, Jubo League.
Rizvi also alleged that the AL activists had stormed and occupied the BNP office at ward 90 in capital Dhaka. He said the BNP supporters came under attacks in Sonaimuri and Senbagh of Noakhali, Homna of Comilla, Sreepur of Munshiganj, Madhabdi of Narsingdi, and Doulatpur of Bhola districts.
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New govt likely to face tough challenge
to fulfil promises
Faruque Ahmed
The landslide victory of Awami League (AL) led grand alliance has sparked the people's expectations that it will be able to bring economic benefits to the common people in the hills of the surging prices of essentials.
The alliance leader and AL chief Sheikh Hasina in her first post election press conference re-iterated her promises to drastically reduce the prices of essentials. In the electioneering campaign, she spoke of bringing down rice prices at Taka 10 per kg and free distribution of fertilizer to farmers.
Jatiya Party president H M Ershad, the other partner of the grand alliance, has also made similar election pledges of providing free food to the poor, besides low cost supply of agricultural inputs including free fertilizers.
They have also promised employment of one person from each family to provide the support for making a living. Time has now come for the AL to form the new government, face people's expectations and deliver the goods.
Sheikh Hasina said market challenge will get top priority of her government. Their election promises came at a time when rice was selling at Taka 30 kg in the market making people desperately looking for some one to rescue them from market cruelty. Fertilizer was selling more than Taka10 per kg while the government's import cost stood at Taka 45 per kg during last boro season, meaning the gap was subsidized by the government. Political observers say the new government will have the tough challenging job to bring down rice prices. Knowledgeable sources say the government may require not less than Taka 20,000 crore annually to bridge the rice price gap if it wants to implement its commitment seriously by reducing rice prices down to Taka 10 per kg.
It may further require Taka 15,000 crore to provide fertilizers free of cost to farmers and at last several billions dollar of annual investment to create jobs or distribute cash as substitute of employment to the unemployed. The country is already having an ever growing social safety net programme with an allocation of Taka 16,000 crore in the current budget.
Bangladesh is now having a one lakh crore taka annual budget in which the real share of the annual development programme is gradually declining and stands slightly over Taka 20,000 thousand crore this year.
The real challenge thus coming to the new government is how to arrange funds and mobilize local resources to meet the promises. Observers say the party manifesto is a public document and was being widely debated.
Since AL has come to power through this election, people are likely to wait for a while and watch out how the new government is working its way around for the implementation of their electoral promises. If they find not much of progress towards that end in the near future, they would obviously be disappointed. A rising expectation with a landslide victory in the elections may thus quickly turn into frustration.
Her other priority is will be to transform Bangladesh into a middle income country within a decade. Her Vision 2021 promising a Digital Bangladesh would require three consecutive terms for herself, which is a too ambitious programme.
The new generation of voters are more educated and conscious compared to their predecessors. They are more exposed to media and prepared to take charge of the situation and may not accept the mismanagement and inaction of any government without a question as their parents did in the past. They may not blame their fate either for their sufferings. They are likely to take the election promises of the government seriously.
The business community with their huge support for the change may also get frustrated soon when their expectations do not match with the real business.
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Israeli attack complicating Obama's plans
Jim Lobe in Washington
Israel's massive three-day aerial assault on Gaza is likely to complicate President-elect Barack Obama's hopes of aggressively pursuing Israeli- Palestinian peace negotiations, and risk inflicting greater damage to Washington's standing in the Arab world, according to most analysts here.
Indeed, if the current campaign goes on much longer and the Israelis launch a major ground invasion of Gaza as they now appear to be preparing to do, Obama could face a major international crisis-comparable to Israel's failed 2006 war against Lebanon's Hezbollah-just as he takes office in three weeks' time.
"With this assault, the fallout has already started to spread considerably beyond the constituency of people who are Palestinians," noted Helena Cobban, a veteran Middle East analyst, who cited popular protests in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world since the Israeli campaign began Saturday on her blog, justworldnews.org.
"It has already started, and we can confidently expect that the longer Israel's assault is maintained, the higher the regional stakes will rise."
The Israeli attacks, which came a week after the expiration of an increasingly shaky six-month cease-fire, have so far reportedly killed more than 300 Palestinians, while two Israelis have died in rocket attacks launched from Gaza.
While Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak initially insisted that Israel's war aims were designed to re-instate and strengthen the cease-fire, the former prime minister who hopes to reclaim that post as head of the Labour Party in Feb. 10 elections, appeared to broaden them in a speech to the parliament Monday in which he pledged "war to the bitter end" against Hamas-the Islamist party that controls Gaza. Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon said Israel aimed to "topple Hamas."
As with the 2006 war, the administration of President George W. Bush has offered strong backing for the Israeli attack, demanding that Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to a "sustainable and durable ceasefire."
"The United States understands that Israel needs to take actions to defend itself," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe at Bush's ranch in Texas, where the outgoing president is spending the Christmas holiday. Johndroe called the leadership of Hamas "nothing but thugs" during a briefing on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Obama, who is vacationing in Hawaii, has declined to comment on the violence and the threat of larger crisis. "The fact is that there is only one president at a time, and that president now is George Bush," Obama's top political adviser, David Axelrod, said on a nationally televised public-affairs programme Sunday.
Axelrod went on to quote Obama as defending Israel's retaliation against Gaza-based militants who launched rockets into the southern Israeli town of Sderot when he visited there in July.
"If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that... And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing," Obama had said at the time. In his speech to the Knesset Monday, Barak significantly repeated the quotation in defending Israel's action.
During the presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly insisted that he-in contrast to his predecessor-would make Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations a top priority "from day one" in his administration. He re- iterated his intention explicitly when he introduced the senior members of his foreign-policy team in Chicago earlier this month.
A number of Obama's informal advisers-including former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski-have publicly urged the president-elect to follow through on that commitment, arguing that nothing could do more to help Washington recover its badly damaged credibility in the Arab and Islamic worlds than to lead a major effort at achieving a two- state solution.
But such an effort is now seen as increasingly problematic, particularly if the Gaza conflict escalates further, according to most experts here.
"It clearly, clearly complicates any effort to engage in a vigorous diplomatic effort, because the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip has necessarily weakened Mahmoud Abbas and his efforts to negotiate with the Israelis," said Steven Cook, a Middle East analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, who also noted the conflict also created "an untenable situation for the Syrians to continue" their Turkish-mediated peace talks with Israel.
The violence "is going to make an already dramatically complicated situation worse," Aaron Miller, a former senior U.S. state department Middle East negotiator now at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars, told the Wall Street Journal. "Obama's going to inherit a crisis without the capacity to do much about it," he told Politico.com.
Not everyone is so pessimistic, however. Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator currently based at the New America Foundation and the Century Fund here, noted that the current crisis serves as a reminder that the Israeli- Palestinian conflict cannot be ignored.
"The new administration needs to embark upon a course of forceful regional diplomacy that breaks fundamentally from past efforts," he added, noting that a consensus within the foreign policy establishment has emerged in favour of a more-assertive peace-making role, including setting forth the basic elements of final settlement, as laid out by Brzezinski and Scowcroft, among other major players.
Cook also agreed that Obama's decisive electoral victory and his vision of more aggressive Middle Eastern diplomacy will give him more leverage over the Israelis who "aren't looking for a fight with" with the new president.
Still, the ongoing violence makes it "hard to see any scenario which produces remotely positive results for anyone involved," according to Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University who specialises in Arab media and public opinion.
"A bloody retaliation against Israelis seems highly likely, and if Abbas is seen as supporting the Israeli offensive against his political rivals, then Hamas may well emerge from this even stronger within Palestinian politics," he wrote in his widely read abuaardvark.com blog. "The offensive is highly unlikely to get rid of Hamas, but it will likely leave an even more poisoned, polarised and toxic regional environment for a new President who had pledged to re- engage with the peace process."
Lynch and Cook, among others, also believe that the continued fighting in Gaza will re-open and widen the breach-already made clear during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war between Arab regime allied to the U.S. and their own publics-to the benefit of Iran and its regional allies, not to mention radical Sunni forces, including al Qaeda.
The fact that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah called Monday for Arabs and Muslims to launch "uprisings" in support of Gaza "should be cause for concern," according to Cook, who noted that the catalyst for the 2006 war was an attack on an Israeli patrol designed to divert the Israelis from ongoing military operations in Gaza.
"Obama has scrupulously [and wisely] adhered to the 'one President at a time' formula in foreign policy up to this point," Lynch wrote, "but you have to wonder how long he can sit by and watch the prospects for meaningful change in the region battered while the administration sits by and cheers."
- Inter Press Service
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DELHI HAS GOT NO GREAT EXPECTATION
Hasina invites Pronab Mukherjee to oath taking ceremony
Moinuddin Naser in New York
Kolkata's largely circulated Bengali daily newspaper Anandabazar Patrika (ABP) has reported on December 31 that Sheikh Hasina has invited Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee to remain present in her oath taking ceremony in Dhaka.
According to the ABP report, the grand alliance leader and Awami League President Sheikh Hasina has made a phone call to the Foreign Minister of India Pronab Mukherjee requesting him to remain present at the oath taking ceremony of her next government.
This was reported in the (ABP) in its 31st December issue, which this correspondent retrieved from Internet. The ABP correspondent Joyanta Ghosal reported from New Delhi, quoting a source at South Block (India's foreign ministry), that the Manmohan Singh government did not want to go ahead with any great expectation about Bangladesh although the grand alliance of Sheikh Hasina won a great victory.
The report states that Sheikh Hasina means the past illusion of liberation war particularly to the people of West Bengal. The report probably for the first time prefixed the word 'Bangabandhu' before the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and said: "Yet the Bangalee Foreign Minister of India does not want to go by emotion, though the daughter of 'Bangabandhu' Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is poised to come to power."
ABP report says that after her victory in the election Sheikh Hasina called the Bangalee Foreign Minister of India, "Dada, you will have to come to participate in the oath taking ceremony (of my government) with Boudi." But the Foreign Minister of India has not yet decided whether he will attend the oath taking ceremony in Dhaka, though he will surely visit Bangladesh before the elections of Lok Sabha, the report added.
Several years ago when Pronob Babu switched his responsibility from Defence Minister to Foreign Minister, the Foreign Minister of the BNP government was the first among the foreign countries who sent him the congratulatory message, the report said. The report added that India had invited Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed to participate in the SAARC Conference after the installation of the Caretaker Government (CG) of Bangladesh to power.
The report said that, at that time a journalist, who is close to Hasina, asked a question to this correspondent as to why India was not coming forward in support of Sheikh Hasina openly in such a restive situation. India did not do that. On the other hand, Foreign Minister Pronab Mukherjee went to visit Bangladesh with relief materials.
During that visit it was seen that Pronob Babu was repeatedly informing the CG about matters of mutual concern and he never wanted to poke his nose into the internal politics of Dhaka. As Pronab Babu says: "This is 2008, not 1971. At that time what India did that was the necessity of the given circumstances. Now the situation has changed."
The ABP report further said: "Now India's stance is, India would establish relations with whoever comes to power in the sovereign neighbouring country. Even Delhi can not say that "it would not keep relationship if military rule is imposed in any neighbouring country."
The report pointed out that once Indian premier Pundit Nehru opened dialogue with Field Marshal Ayub Khan of Pakistan. Indira Gandhi was compelled to initiate talks with Gen. Ziaul Haque after the hanging of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Again Atal Bihari Bazpayee gave democratic recognition to Parvez Musharraf by according him red carpet reception at the Agra Summit just after the wounds of Kargil war. Atal Bihari Vajpayee government also maintained good relations with Bangladesh during the rule of Khaleda Zia, and continued bilateral relations.
The report recalled that during the SAARC conference in Katmandhu, Khaleda Zia listened to Vajpayee's prescription for curing her knee pain. Again Brojesh Misra did not hesitate to visit Dhaka to warn about terrorist activities against India."
The report stated: "Pranob Babu, a follower of Indira Gandhi, knows Sheikh Hasina personally for a long time." It is doubtless that Sheikh Hasina has an image of a 'daughter of the same household' to New Delhi and West Bengal. It is obviously easy for India to go for diplomatic negotiations with the same much known 'daughter of Mujib'. But the Foreign Minister i.e. Indian government is aware of the limitations of the future government of Dhaka.
The report further said in the past Hasina had to pay a heavy price for her 'friend of India image', when she was in power. Hasina also learnt a lesson from her past experience. This time Jatiya Party of Ershad is the ally of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League, if Jamaat-e-Islami is the ally of Khaleda Zia's BNP. Like the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Jatiya Party also announced that they would introduce blasphemy law in their party manifesto. And it was Ershad who declared Islam as the State religion when he was in power. As a result the other religious communities became second class citizens.
The report further added: "Sheikh Mujibur Rahman wanted to lead the country towards the path of secularism. Delhi is doubtful about the ability of the 'daughter of Mujib' to renounce the influence of the fundamentalist forces, when the party of Ershad is her ally. Jatiya Party of Ershad also bagged 27 seats; so it will have some kind of control. Besides, there will be a control from the cantonment, whoever may come to power, under the given political situation of Bangladesh.
Sheikh Hasina is also not beyond the control of the military, though she is not like Khaleda. Keeping all these in mind India wants to strengthen the relations with Bangladesh because of recent conflict with Pakistan. The objective is that Pakistan can not use Bangladesh as the field of its anti-India activities. Referring to the act of terrorism on the soil of Bangladesh Pronab Babu has made it crystal clear. He said, "The problem will be raised when new government will be installed. Let us see how far we can achieve."
The Ananada Bazar Patrika report further stated: "This was the only hope of Delhi that the military and Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh have not been strengthened as in Pakistan." This time it is also clear in the elections' result. The military wanted a fragile government. People have voted en-masse in favour of the alliance of Sheikh Hasina. The Jamaat-e-Islami has become obscure as it is seen in the results of the votes. Yet it is not that the extreme forces of the party of Ershad would try to hold the country inside 'veils'. Will Hasina be able to complete the trial of the killers of Sheikh Mujib by neglecting those extreme forces? Will Hasina be able to chant the slogans of development by discarding the anti-Indian card, when Norendra Modi is not stepping back from demolishing temple in the interest of development ? South Block is waiting to see that."
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GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT
Bahadur Shah Zafar
K. Z. Islam
Kitna hai bud naseeb, Zafar, dafan ke lieye,
Do gaz zameen bhi na mili koo-e-yaar mein
At 4 p.m. on a hazy, humid winter's afternoon in Rangoon in November 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave at the back of a walled prison enclosure. The bier of the State Prisoner - as the deceased was referred to - was accompanied by two of his sons and an elderly bearded mullah. The ceremony was brief. The British authorities had made sure not only that the grave was already dug, but the quantities of lime were on hand to guarantee the rapid decay of both bier and body.
The State Prisoner referred to was no other than Bahadur Shah II, known from his pen name as Zafar. A most extraordinary book called The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple recounts in minute detail the fall of the Mughal dynasty in 1857.
Zafar was the last Mughal Emperor, and the direct descendant of Genghis Khan and Timur, of Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan. He was born in 1775, when the British were still a relatively modest and mainly coastal power in India, looking inwards from three enclaves on the Indian shore. In his lifetime he had seen his own dynasty reduced to humiliating insignificance, while the British transformed themselves from vulnerable traders into an aggressively expansionist military force.
On a May morning in 1857, three hundred mutinous sepoys and cavalrymen from Meerut rode into Delhi, massacred every Christian man, woman and child they could find in the city, and declared Zafar to be their leader and emperor. Zafar was no friend of the British, who had shorn him of his patrimony, and subjected him to almost daily humiliation. Yet Zafar was not a natural insurgent either. It was with severe misgivings and little choice that he found himself made the nominal leader of an Uprising that he strongly suspected from the start was doomed: a chaotic and officer-less army of unpaid peasant soldiers set against the forces of the world's greatest military power.
The siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad: a fight to the death between two powers, neither of whom could retreat. There were unimaginable casualties, and on both sides the combatants were driven to the limits of physical and mental endurance. Finally, on 14 September 1857, the British and their hastily assembled army of Sikh and Pathan levees assaulted and took the city, sacking and looting the Mughal capital, and massacring great swathes of the population. In one mahalla alone, Kucha Chelan, some 1,400 citizens of Delhi were cut down.
Those city dwellers who survived the killing were driven out into the countryside to fend for themselves. Delhi was left an empty ruin. Though the royal family had surrendered peacefully, most of the emperor's sixteen sons were captured, tried and hung, while three were shot in cold blood, having first freely given up their arms, then been told to strip naked: 'In 24 hours I disposed of the principal members of the house of Timur the Tartar,' Captain William Hodson wrote to his sister the following day, 'I am not cruel, but I confess I did enjoy the opportunity of ridding the earth of these wretches'. Zafar himself was put on show to visitors, displayed like a beast in a cage. He was a dim, wandering eyed, dreamy old man with a feeble hanging nether lip and toothless gums.
Nevertheless, the following month Zafar was put on trial in the ruins of his old palace, and sentenced to transportation. He left his beloved Delhi on a bullock cart. Separated from everything he loved, broken-hearted, the last of the Great Mughals died in exile in Rangoon on Friday, 7 November 1862, aged eighty-seven.
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SAMM warns South Asian media
against jingoism
Jonaid Iqbal in Islamabad
The media in South Asia have been invited to promote the ongoing peace efforts that would open up the South Asian region to progress.
"Media people should refrain from scuttling the peace process", was the bottom-line of the executive summary of the South Asia Media Monitor (SAMM), 2008, launched by South Asia Media Commission here on December 29.
The report, launched simultaneously in the capitals of eight South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, looks into professional competence of media people, the dangers they face during performance as well as the fault lines seen during the current year.
The report also documented the death of 22 journalists -seven each in India and Pakistan and two each in Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka -killed by non-state actors. Exposing the fault lines following the terror attack in Mumbai, the media, more especially the electronic media, was said to have played irresponsible role in fanning jingoist propaganda to advance the likelihood of clash between Pakistan and India.
The Indian electronic media channels recognised the danger and recommended a set of ethical norms.
The Pakistani media was also asked to formulate a set of similar rules. "Not the sort of rules that the government is working at with media owners, in which the working journalists and the civil society have not been consulted. The rules should be drawn and enforced by the working journalists themselves," it was mooted.
Hype about war
Speaking on the occasion, South Asia Media Commission's secretary general, Najam Sethi, warned against the crisis democracy was facing in Pakistan and the dangers to its survival. He said the era of professional editors was over. Media in Pakistan had been transferred to the corporate sector, in which the owner-editors had an eye on increasing viewers and adding to advertisement revenue. Thus, we see downsizing in the media and reduction in advertisement revenue. Only a handful of channels would survive the economic depression the country was going through. "Only the fittest would survive in these bad times". But he blamed the media hype about war was initiated by the Indian media and Pakistan only followed suit.'
However, SMC's coordinator, Husain Naqi contested the point about lack of revenue in the electronic media. He observed that during the past two or three years they have made a killing through advertisements. The least they should do is provide good compensation and look after the working journalists, accepting the wage board award, which has been waiting to be implemented since nine years during which the cost of living had increased manifolds.
Afzal Khan, Pakistan coordinator of the Monitor, chipped in with the remark, "The wage board had listed the bare minimum need of the working journalists."
A PTV director, who said the electronic channels, should have uniform rules for recruitment and emoluments, described another fault line. The excessive sums being paid to some were being stolen from each other.
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