There is something here that reminds you of the Bhuttos in Pakistan. Two years ago, after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, her family made it known that she had left the Pakistan People's Party in the care of her son and her husband. Now the husband, certainly possessed of a dubious character, struggles to deflect the demands for his resignation from the presidency in light of the Supreme Court ruling annulling the notorious National Reconciliation Ordinance. And the young son, still at Oxford, prepares to take over Pakistan sometime in the not-too-distant future.

That, of course, depends on what the Pakistan state meanwhile does to keep itself going, seeing that it has the Taliban to contend with and the American drone flights to put an end to if it means to remain a sovereign state.

But turn back to Bangladesh, to the surprises it is regularly pelted with. Who would have known, back in 1971, that the Jamaat-e-Islami would nearly forty years down the road jolt us into an awareness of its own "dedication" to the cause of Bengali freedom? The party which so cheerfully assisted the Pakistan occupation army through forming such murder squads as the Razakars, al Badr and al Shams, has now "honoured" five freedom fighters.

Miracles, especially those of a sinister hue, never cease. And here where you have everything being readied for a trial of war criminals, you note that a party which so vociferously defended the murky cause of Pakistan during the War of Liberation now throws wool over our eyes through informing us that it has its own band of freedom fighters who served the cause in 1971.

But it is not merely the BNP and the Jamaat, which have been weighing us down with surprises. Observe the very establishmentarian nature of the comments Sahara Khatun has been making in recent days. A good many weeks after Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan's defence of "crossfire" killings, the home minister enlightens us with news that under the year-old Awami League government, there have been no "crossfire" killings in Bangladesh. Do you see how the facts fly in the face of such assertions?

As many as a hundred and twenty three individuals died in these outrageous "crossfire" killings this year alone. But, of course, the minister would have us know that those who were shot down were men who had fired at the security forces who, in turn, had acted in self-defence. Ah, but here again is that old question from us: How is it that no one among the security forces has ever borne the mark of any injury and how is it that those murdered in "crossfires" have always breathed their last on open fields in some rural setting or the other?

Politics is dragged through mud and slime when Sajeda Chowdhury, once a minister and now deputy leader of the House in Parliament, raises the mischievous question of what Begum Zia does at her party office in the late hours. You would have expected better behaviour and more edifying utterances from one who has had such a long career in politics. Ms. Chowdhury's comments have made the Awami League go red in the face. And it has left citizens across the spectrum wallowing in undying shame. Why do politicians like Sajeda Chowdhury not remember that people have long memories, that they remember, that there is the next election to be fought in four years' time?

If Sahara Khatun and Sajeda Chowdhury have been embarrassing the country, Syed Ashraful Islam has not remained far behind. The local government minister chooses not to speak on his ministry or on his party, but focuses instead on the new Hawa Bhaban he thinks will mutate out of the BNP office in Gulshan. He dwells on the grave damage to be done to politics if Tarique Rahman re-enters the scene. Must he go into all that? Should he be presuming what the BNP will or will not be doing? Must ministerial dignity be stripped away in such cavalier fashion?

A year after the general elections, the lights are going out. Partisan politics, vicious in form, gains ground by the day. The man or woman who will unify the country, who will be the symbol of national unity, is a dream not about to take the shape of reality.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star. E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk

[Source: The Daily Star]