South Korean prime minister Chung Hong-won resigned over the incident of ferry sinking at coast and took the responsibility of his
Generally our government does not feel like accepting liability of any accident. But the South Korean prime minister Chung Hong-won resigned over the incident of ferry sinking off the coast and accepted the liability of his failure in handling the deadly incident.
Even though there is a lot of examples of resignation in Europe-America, in Bangladesh this type of instance is rare.
While resigning, the South Korean prime minister said, “It has been 10 days since the ferry sank, I can’t sleep when I see the grieving families who still couldn’t find their near ones in this accident”
It is amazing to see that to what extent democratic a prime minister could be that he quits from his position to take a stand beside the people.
In the ferry accident, about 200 bodies have been recovered till now and more than 100 are missing. 14 crew of the ferry including the ferry pilot were arrested in this connection and brought to justice.
Allegation arose over changing of the main structure of the ferry to take more passengers in it. It is assumed that the ferry became unsafe and lost its balance due to some changes in the main structure.
So it is not merely an accident, but a human-created deadly accident.
In a real democratic system — hope, happiness and sufferings of the common people are the main things. If the government, elected by the people, failed to fulfil the demand of its electors, if the people suffer for the failure of the government then the government is liable for this.
In our neighbouring country India, once a railway minister quit his job accepting the liability of a train accident. But in Bangladesh any minister or bureaucrat never resigned over any accident. Even they do not want to accept liability of failure.
If the ministers concerned resigned after the Rana Plaza collapse last year, it would reflect the dutifulness of the government towards the people.
Our leaders have a lot of things to learn from the resignation of South Korean prime minister.
Source: Prothom Alo
