ASM Abdul Halim :
The word ‘Reform’ has been widely discussed across the country, day and night. The media is also pursuing this issue, heading toward an uncertain destination. It is not known wherefrom it will start and where it will stop. As of now, the word is being discussed in the cabinet, ministries, other government offices, private offices, places like trains, buses, coffee shops, tea stalls, rural huts and bazars. To speak the truth, the whole of Bangladesh is now in a “Reform” syndrome. This syndrome, however, has not appeared in the surface or lime light, in public suddenly. It had long been thought, cherished and discussed and made public long ago by the Bangladesh Nationalist party, the largest democratic, welfare and development-oriented party, the fortune maker and dreamer of the millions, the fortune teller of down trodden.
BNP is a party always walks in advance with brilliant team of leaders, who have highest political philosophy with best and clear political thought, with visionary zeal, crystal clear ideas about the state machinery, they have their kind mind for the people. The leadership in the team is very strong with solid rock like foundation, sound, sober and matured leadership like Mr. Tarique Rahman, now acting chairman of the party who rose from the grass root politics to the present position. He emerged as a statesman with his unparallel dynamic wisdom and patriotic and true leadership. His dedication and sufferings for the country knows no bounds. Mr. Tarique Rahman has his own charisma with his youth, vigor and courage. Moreover, he inherited inborn qualities and ideologies from his beloved father, our great leader Shahid President Ziaur Rahman, the patriot, the warrior, the symbol of honesty and democracy. He was a true Muslim, a Bengali Nationalist who believed “Allah is the fountain of justice, from (God) Allah springs all-pervading love and justice for mankind”. This is the brave man who declared Independence of Bangladesh and this is the man who sacrificed his life for the country.
He is a great politician whose ideology later on illuminated the millions and followed by his life partner Begum Khaleda Zia who gave tireless, effort, to implement these ideas and thoughts. We feel honored to call her “Mother of Democracy” for her relentless support for democracy. She still suffers innumerable inhuman sufferings, languishing in deathbed both with physical & mental agony with multifarious stings and pains.
Now let us come back to ‘Reform syndrome’, Reform itself has become a synonym of the words syndrome, ‘the oxford language’ defined syndrome as group of systems which consistently occur together or a condition characterized by a set of an associated syndromes. A system characterizes combination of opinions, emotion or behavior.
Broadly speaking ‘Reform’ means to make changes in order to improve something. Many dictionaries give, many synonyms such as improvement, make better, ameliorate, remodel, reshape, amend, make adjustment, renovate, revolutionize, so on and so forth. Reform may be needed in various sectors viz social, economic, and political and many others. These sectors again intertwined with each other. Let us, suppose, for example the case of social reform. Social reform refers to the processing of addressing social issues that affect marginalized and advocates for change. It involves mobilizing political participation and raising awareness about social injustice in order to compensate for the health of political organization or in low levels of political participation among poor groups of people. Now let us think about who is the reformer and for whom the reform is made, two groups of people one at the top and the other is at the bottom, the top is very small group of man, i.e. the government. The government is not a machine, nor it is made of wood or steel, neither it is brick or stone. It is a combination of a few persons of blood and flesh. These blood and flesh must be pure with human qualities, high standard of morality and ethics.
In this context a high philosophical thought as propounded by a political scientist Edmund Burk, may be mentioned here. He said “Government is a contrivance of human wisdom, to provide for human wants”. Without this human virtue and the welfare nothing good can be achieved. Therefore, when we think about reform, we should think and relate the qualities of human virtues and welfare to the people, and again when we talk about virtues, these virtues remind us about moralities both for top of the society and the bottom strata of the society and of course those who are in the government, at the helm of affairs, they must be taken into consideration first.
Morality is the human attempt to define what is right and wrong in thoughts and behavior, resulting in a system or set of ideas about good vs bad action and the basis of any individual or community, belief in what constitutes good behavior or proper conduct. In a nutshell, morality is the belief that some behavior is ‘right’ and ‘acceptable’ and the other is ‘wrong’. Morality may be specifically synonymous with goodness, appropriateness or rightness. Examples of ‘morality’ includes being honest, treating others with respect helping those in head and hearing to laws and social norms.
The present interim government has taken up various reforms agenda which are of course, good gesture and the BNP long ago took up a reform agenda almost similar to these reform agenda, “The structural reform of the state” which had been duly informed by a nationwide address by Mr. Tarique Rahman acting chairman of the party. He gave a vivid outline of structural reforms of the state. He started his speech saying “the key sectors of the economy have been totally collapsed due to unbridled corruption and mismanagement in connivance with the ruling clique (the then AL), the inexcusable future of the central bank plunderers of private and public banks and vicious loan scams, by different banks have crippled the corrupt financial sector. He said further “on behalf of BNP we would like to declare in clear terms that establishment of national unity will be the core principle and the principal basis for repairing this fragile state and its running in future”.
“This outline of the structural reform of the state has been prepared in line with 19 points of late president Ziaur Rahman and BNP’s ‘vision 2030’ declared by ‘Deshnetri’ Begum Khaleda Zia’. These ideas of structural reform will certainly help preparing the reform by the present government and therefore, the government may take this opportunity to sit together, discuss more and more with BNP and other leaders, especially those who have expertise in the respective fields. For example, administrative reform is one of the key and crying needs of the day and there are many experts in the field of administration in the BNP arena. The government may seek help from BNP’s experts for their valuable opinions and recommendations in this regard.
(The writer is ex-Cabinet Secretary and the Adviser to the BNP Chairperson).
