This year on June 23, the founding day of the Awami League back in 1949, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told her impugned parliament that the party has survived many attempts in the past to “eliminate” it and is now unassailable: “nobody can destroy Awami League”.
Some old guards of that party, whose laments come out in vernacular newspapers from time to time, are not mincing their words to suggest that the party in fact is on the verge of committing suicide. They lament that the party has lost its anchors in the soil of this nation, do not recognise any more its dedicated veterans, has been taken over by thugs and self-seekers at all levels of its hierarchy, has lost all values yielding to lust for power and lures of a quick buck, has chosen to turn the nation-state into a 21st century banana republic in which citizens have been turned into hapless “subjects” of a police raj.
Alienation of ruling party
As such, the ruling party is alienated altogether from ordinary people of the country, who are at the receiving end of a merciless persecution and extortion offensive by different police stations and plainclothes Detective Branch (DB) personnel during this Ramadan. Some vicious criminal rackets have also joined the offensive as partners or chartered libertines of the Police Raj.
Every day, the newspapers are carrying stories of abduction from the streets and raids in homes by true or false DB personnel. They are obtaining, on pain of death, torture or false implication in terrorist charge or felonious gang case, huge sums of money from innocent abductees and detainees. The greed of such police officials has gone sky-high, and they openly boast that the party-in-power is in power because of them, and they do not have to answer to anybody. Barring few at the top, the rogue elements of the police seem to take the population of the country as a whole (again barring a few at the top) as hostage to their whims and extortion games.
The ruling party mafia meanwhile are being systematically commuted from partners into surrogates of the omnipotence of police raj. Riddled with factional feuds and turf-wars among dons and godfathers of the ruling party apparatus, deaths of this and that leader or activist of the party in mysterious circumstances also make breaking news in the media almost daily.
By holding to delegated power in the-then East Pakistan or occupied Bangladesh with the backing of the occupation forces of Pakistan, and being privy to tormenting our people, the-then ruling party at 66 brought about its doom and defeat. The claimant of victory at that time, the Awami League is now at 66, privy to tormenting our people by a Frankenstein of abusive Police Power it indulges. It is Awami old guards now keeping aloof who are warning against the suicidal dependence of the ruling party on police support, which may lead to inevitable downfall that may await the fate of the party.
Are they crying wolf?
Source: Weekly Holiday
