Come to think of it. The world, despite the increasingly shrinking frontiers it is being pushed into, remains a rather interesting place. Britain’s Labour Party has just elected the old-fashioned socialist Jeremy Corbyn as its new leader. You might be deluded into believing that the old days of socialism, or propagation of socialism, are back. Not so. What has happened is a loud expression of the feeling among a majority of the Labour faithful that capitalism, even the brand which Tony Blair and Gordon Brown touted under New Labour, has done more harm than good. Power since the departure of James Callaghan from office in 1979 has gradually but decisively passed into the hands of the elite.
It is a reversal of that trend which Corbyn would now like to bring about. Whether he can do that is quite another matter. There are all the naysayers who are convinced that under its new leader, Labour will march to a defeat at the next election. But politics being a regular intermix of the miraculous and the predictable, one will just have to wait to see what Corbyn makes of his triumph within the party. There will be the lessons he will draw from Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, neither of whom was able to take the party to 10 Downing Street because of policies considered unsustainable at the time.
Politics, despite all the aversion and the cynicism you have about it, plays a ceaseless part in your life. Observe the manner in which Sheikh Hasina’s government, here in Bangladesh, chose to bow to the demands of private university students for a withdrawal of the Value Added Tax earlier imposed on their tuition fees. Despite repeated government pronouncements that the VAT was for the universities to pay out of the existing fees, the untruth was peddled that it was the pockets of the students’ guardians the government was after. Now that the VAT has been withdrawn, you wonder if the move does not presage the arrival of bad days in the country. If students of private universities can commandeer public roads and subject citizens to endless suffering, if their teachers do nothing to hold them back and indeed appear to be egging them on, it is a dangerous signal we have before us. What happens if tomorrow or the day after other groups from the various professions decide to take a leaf out of these students’ book and seize the roads and stay there till their demands are acceded to?
By stepping back from the VAT issue, the Awami League-led government has clearly beaten a retreat. Whether it was a tactical or pragmatic move is a matter of debate. The point now is that the students have won. And the authorities of the private universities shrewdly stayed away from telling them that they had nothing to fear from all this noise over the VAT. Well, let all that be. Politics is sometimes in a curious state of flux. Observe the suddenness with which Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been replaced as the leader of the ruling Liberal Party. Such changes have been taking place with pretty much of a regularity in Australia. Not long ago, Julia Gillard toppled Kevin Rudd, who went on to stage a comeback and replace her. That is the nature of politics. Dog eat dog, would you say? It may not precisely be that, but how do you explain the frontrunner position the irascible Donald Trump has reached in the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination in the United States? His understanding of politics is limited, he does not respect people, he speaks disparagingly of women and he is consistently trumpeting his own glories. And yet he is far ahead of the pack of presidential hopefuls at this point. At the other end, the ceaselessly ambitious Hillary Clinton is in trouble again over the e-mails issue. The last time she had a shot at the White House was seven years ago, when her formidable machine was reduced to splinters by an upstart named Barack Obama. This year, as her ratings as the Democratic frontrunner drop, you wonder if she will at all be able to make it to the presidency. She has the makings of a strong, good, experienced leader. It will be bad and sad if she does not become president.
In politics, there are all the insensitivities which often mar the chances of the good it can do. As you watch all those refugees from Syria and Iraq and other countries crowd the beaches of Europe, you hear of the Saudi monarch and his retinue taking up a whole suite on their visit to the United States. Neither the Saudi royals nor the many Arab sheikhdoms have said a word in sympathy for these hapless migrants. Doesn’t it bother you that every time Muslims fall in trouble it is always the non-Muslim nations which come to their aid? Doesn’t it worry you that not a single Arab state came forth to uphold the dignity of Iraq when George W. Bush and Tony Blair pulverized the country into unimaginable destruction?
Source: UNB.com.bd
