M. Shahidul Islam in Toronto
People get used to live in fear of life under chronic conditions of instability and insecurity accompanied by routine corruption and mafia coercion of a despotic rule. But fear of the unknown and unusual goings-on are bound to unnerve a nation. Many Bangladeshi high-ups and big-wigs have recently flown out of the country with the fear that anything may happen any time while, many more within the country find the existential political and social climate dreadful.
This precarious ambiance is posing a grave threat to the economy by deterring investment and growth and tampering with confidence. And, not only the nation is bereft of a functional parliament and democratic governance, but also afflicted with unbearable social insecurity, rampant murders and the latest spike in the prices of the essentials, compounded further by an arbitrary and inexplicable rise in the prices of gas and electricity.
Much more is feared in coming days as crops damage has been alarming and substantial in staggered pockets of flooding across the country. Flood victims are left adrift with little or no public assistance. Hundreds of villages, mosques and schools across the country remain submerged in water. Millions are marooned.
Beneath the surface
Add to it what may be purposely sought to brew beneath the surface. Whispers are being echoed even in North America that ‘anything can happen anytime in Bangladesh.’ A syndrome of fear has also gripped the ruling party mandarins. AL’s secretary general, Syed Ashraf, had recently cautioned: “Something ominous may occur.” Some other ruling party leaders said: “BNP wants to kill Sheikh Hasina.”
The BNP, for its part, is reticent for mysterious reasons. While bone-chilling utterances from many ruling alliance quarters were being orchestrated as the usual ‘August blusters’ (the familiar refrains that accompany the commemoration of the tragic incidents of August 15, 1975, when Sheikh Mujib was murdered and of August 21, 2004 when a vicious grenade attack on an Awami League meeting killed dozens), the BNP’s public response was patently mild and muted. Beneath the surface meanwhile, a storm is raging within the ruling alliance, the nature and causes of which are turbid and hence giving rise to ominous conjectures. People ear deeply disturbed worrying what may happen in the offing.
Confession of a maverick
A Dhaka court on August 29 placed one Moshiur Rahman Mamun on one-day’s fresh remand to enable police to quiz him on the alleged phone conversations with Nagorik Oikya Convener Mahmudur Rahman Manna. The DB said Mamum was arrested from the capital’s Uttara on August 24, four days before he was produced before the court. But rumours are afloat that he had been picked up by RAB or DB in February, around the time of Manna’s arrest on February 24.
Where was Mamun so long, and who is he? One of his close associates say: “Mamun was picked up by RAB first in February and quizzed for months before the DGFI requested him to be transferred to them due to his alleged role in plotting a coup. The DGFI kept him for six months and handed him back to the police only last week.”
The hide and seek about Mamun’s arrest notwithstanding, what the law enforcers got from him had quickly been whispered into the ears of many ruling party stalwarts, stirring up an unprecedented ferment of chain reaction that had played out through the month of August. The resultant fear-mongering had pushed into the back burner the sensitive case of a minister and a close relative of the PM, who was alleged to have grabbed minority Hindu property.
Coup foiled?
Some persons feeling vulnerable to police traps being laid for victims had recently fled the country and arrived in North America. One of them said that Mamun had divulged many names to his interrogators about a planned coup d’etat that had gone awry due to his timely arrest. He claimed, “I left the country because I was tipped off about the certainty of being arrested simply because I knew Mamun closely.”
An investigation on Mamun’s antecedents reveals him as a maverick with high ambitions. Purportedly a businessman with British mooring, he had hobnobbed with politicians and civil-military bureaucrats prior to an attempted uprising in the army on 20 May, 1996. He is also known to have been close to Lt. Gen (retd) Masud Uddin, one of the architects of the 1/11 military intervention in 2007.
Since the botched January election of 2014, Mamun is learnt to have claimed, and is said to have confessed to investigators, that he was the emissary of secret messages passed between some civil society members including politicians, and many serving and retired army officers. Manna’s arrest in February is linked to the busting of this alleged scheme in which many civil society luminaries, including Dr. Kamal Hossain, were said to have been looped.
The BNP nexus
Amidst a violent and stalemated political climate that had prevailed prior to and after the January 2014 election, causing many deaths and destruction of national wealth, the allegation of coup plotting was brought to a stunning conclusion following a leaked phone conversation between BNP leader Sadeque Hossain Khoka, in New York city, and Mr. Manna. “Manna had collected Khoka’s telephone number from Moshiur Rahman Mamun,” one of Mamun’s interrogators reportedly revealed.
Did the authorities play hide and sick with Mamun’s arrest and if so, why? Apart from the question being of law and human rights, could the reason be the pursuit of a BNP nexus in the alleged plot?
Mamun’s family sources claim he was picked up by RAB detectives from a house in Dhanmondi’s Road-14/A on February 23. With respect to Manna, he too was initially picked up by plain clothed detectives on February 23 but was shown arrested on February 25. In the meantime, 17 hours of hybrid speculations had gone on in the electronic media in Dhaka about who picked him up from his ‘niece’s house in Banani.’
Only days before the arrest of Manna and Mamun, Manna, Dr Kamal and Kader Siddique, all formerly of the Awami League, had been advocating for holding a dialogue between the ruling alliance and the BNP. That had earned for them the wrath and revulsion of the ruling coterie.
External connection
Much earlier, in January 2012, the BBC had reported: “Bangladesh army had foiled an impending coup against the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.” Quoting a military spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Masud Razzaq, the report said, “The officers planning the coup were in active military service.” A Major General, two Brigadier Generals, and 10 other mid-ranking officers were later removed from the service. One Major Zia is said to have either fled, or murdered in secrecy. The Mail online of India had reported on January 20, 2012: “India has helped Bangladesh avert what could have been reminiscent of the bloody military takeover in the wake of the assassination of the country’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, more than 36 years ago.”
The arrest of Manna and Mamun reportedly followed a private meeting in Savar in early February 2015 at the BRAC training institute in which some civil society stalwarts, including Manna, and at least eight ambassadors of North America and Europe were present. Police production of Mamun in Dhaka court in the sentimentally charged month of August this year brought into the rumour mill recapitulation of such publicised ripples of disturbance in the security establishment of the nation-state, including memories of brutal massacre of army officers by the-then para-military Bangladesh Rifles (now Border Guards Bangladesh) mutineers, their connection with a ruling party Member of Parliament with dynastic feather in his cap coming to focus again. They had a countervailing effect on the shrill hype of August blusters by the choir of ruling alliance leaders this year, including repeat public warnings by top echelons of the Awami League about ‘foreign’ secret service reports of plot to kill Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. But these are scary noises with which Bangladeshi public are familiar. They are not the cause of current climate of fear.
The real cause of fear
Real cause of fear emanates from the said Member of Parliament with a dynastic feather in his cap taking on a public prosecutor appearing for a sitting minister, also with a dynastic feather in his cap, for legal proceedings of defamation of the minister by a ‘Hindu’ journalist from a family of liberation war victims. More ominously, the same MP and a number of other parliamentarians with dynastic feathers in their caps along with close relations of the same orbit are up against a number of other ministers and MPs of the ruling alliance and vice-versa in an abusive war of words.
Instances of past disloyalties on both sides to the founder-president of Bangladesh at times of crises are being dug up hurled at one another. In particular, an Awami League group of leaders and a JSD leaders’ group are literally at each other’s throat. Members of the Student’s League are also at rampage in several educational institutions, universities and hostels, attacking teachers, suspected Shibir (Islamic-minded) students, factional rivals and chandabazi (extortion) targets around campuses alike. Turf wars are going on with beatings, killings and abduction of targeted victims. The Prime Minister has threatened weeding her party as well as her student wing, etc. of parasites, but to no practical effect.
The essential question
All this is happening when the mainstream opposition is more muted than ever under mamla hamla (harassing criminal cases and police raids) ordeal. The tame parliamentary opposition is only making a show of breaking out of its fetters by a walk-out from the National Assembly floors protesting price-hike of gas and electricity. Cut-throat noises are all within the ruling coterie, and that is creating a real panic. The Prime Minister’s express vexation does not ensure any control, although no one yet believes that an alternative power-centre is in the making within the ruling coterie and the clan.
Interestingly, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, on the occasion of the founding anniversary of BNP on September 1, has extended an open call to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to jointly build national consensus on politics of development to build the nation-state and abandon on both sides politics of hatred and mud-slinging, albeit reiterating at the same time her main demand for a ‘snap’ election to obtain a truly representative parliament. The essential question is, will the Prime Minister respond to that call by a motion of comprehensive dialogue with the BNP leader including a framework for credible election, to be able divert if not control the wild forces within her camp from ripping one another apart?
Source: Weekly Holiday
