Talking has been a problem, a real life problem these days. The citizens, who boast of being the conscious segment of the society, fear about what they should say, and how they should react to the reaction of what they have already said, innocently.
No, let me not refer to arguments and statements made in public forum, courtroom, or in front of an office boss. In social and family gatherings, too, gentlemen mostly prefer self-censorship, lest they entangle in altercation with friends and relatives and have to pay long-term price for madness of a moment.
Another consequence of such interactions, often unknown to the victim, is sad and shameful backbiting about him/her. That practice has also a cost.
If the issue involves the state and power, people do not love to even imagine punishment and embarrassment that may await them and their near and dear ones. So, free thinking in one’s own brain may put him/her into trouble, if anything critical is somehow expressed.
Some people, however, can afford to enjoy more freedom to express whatever they like, going beyond their private territory. Because, they know, they are immune from official admonition that can damage their career.
Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmed, a retired civil servant-turned-chief-election-commissioner, has made certain insinuations that thousands of Bangladesh people are criminals. “Only criminals maintain two or more birth dates and addresses in the voters’ list,” is what he said at a meeting in Sylhet on 18 August.
In a country where there was no birth registration system, school teachers and local level officers usually used imagined birthdates of students and others whenever necessary. Before the 2008 listing (under the national ID card project), internally migrant people did register their names with voters’ rolls in two places - one at village home and the other at the present address in a city or town. People displaced for river erosion or livelihoods crisis had to change their addresses.
All those people knew never before that they were engaged in criminal acts until Kazi Rakibuddin divulged it. If he is ethically so strong, he should have suggested that the ‘criminals’, be they over million in number, should be sued with retrospective effect.
What would be his reaction if the Bangladesh people ever demanded a trial of election officials for conducting fraudulent elections? The most remarkable achievement of his career was perhaps the dubious election process of 2013-2014.
When city corporation polls in Dhaka and Chittagong in April 2015 were plagued by reported intimidation and massive rigging with Kazi Rakibuddin at the helm of the election commission, he claimed the voting to be free and fair. Is it not lying at the very least, and a criminal offence punishable under the penal code?
Kazi Rakibuddin found a friend in Annisul Huq, who tried to justify the massive rigging and occupation of polling stations by the ruling party men. Hours before being declared mayor of Dhaka North, Huq equated the violation of the people’s constitutional rights of voting with a bit of ‘foul play’ and said it (playing foul) is commonplace in a game.
Perhaps the collapse in Dhaka’s traffic system in recent times and no improvement in roads and drainage system are the results of such play. He did not mind the massive extortion, in city areas under his jurisdiction, before the national mourning day.
Rather, an over-smart business-man-cum-public-official managed to outsmart others in and outside the party by organising a photo exhibition to divert the public attention elsewhere. He is also lucky that his justification of foul play was not condemned the way, for instance, French footballer Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt during the 2006 world cup final matc football was discussed around the world.
We cannot turn our face to anywhere else today to watch fair play as the results of foul play are so obvious and scary. However, conventionally, the powerful people would term incidents like killing and loss of lives as isolated ones.
Bangladesh Chhatra League activists even beat up children for protesting against their teacher being assaulted by the BCL men in Chandpur. Their comrades fought each other with firearms in Magura, leaving a baby in his mother’s womb bullet-hit. In Dhaka, the BCL cadres beat a juvenile boy to death. Since the killing of Biswajit in old Dhaka in 2012, the list of isolated incidents goes on.
Apparently scared of certain anarchy that can shatter the power structure, the government came out with short-cut solution - cross-fire or what the home minister called ‘gunfight’ - to stop these elements forever. Only the difference is that it is the opposition activists who generally face such consequences. Now it is the turn of the ruling party men to face the government’s stern “action”, described by ruling party MP Fazle Noor Taposh as killing.
Why is this slide in law and order when the actual opposition forces have not been able to conspire to cause harm to the rulers, thanks to the iron hands of the regime? There is no protest against misdeeds, but there is no end of creation of issues that make whispering a culture in the society.
To find a brief answer to why so many ‘isolated incidents’ are taking place, we may recollect an old saying, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. And the origin of these problems is only one ‘foul play’ - the one-sided ballot on 5 January 2014.