If we can’t be above law, break Constitution, rig election and become rich then why in power?

Editorial Desk :
To our amazement our leaders staying in India as exile government for nine months changed themselves so much as not to uphold the values of democratic leadership for serving the people selflessly. To the government, the constitutional obligation to hold free and fair election is not acceptable, still it has no difficulty in calling itself a democratic government. The bitter truth is we have no able political leadership to solve political issues politically.

The home minister of UK, Suella Braverman, is now under pressure to resign. Her fault was she breached the speed limit while driving her car. She agreed that there was violation of the law and paid fine in accordance with the law, and that should be enough for her respect for the law.
The home minister is blamed for violating ministerial ethics and she should leave the ministerial position.

We can recall the former prime minister of UK, Boris Johnson, who had to resign for telling lies about having a party of his officials when such gatherings were prohibited during covid-19 pandemic. He paid the fine imposed by police. Yet he had to resign despite the fact that he led the party to achieve big electoral victory.

Strangely, the greatest threat to democracy in freed Bangladesh came from the political leaders elected by people in the election of 1971 and who in the past struggled with the people to secure democratic rights. The fundamental thing is that, as elected by the people, the ministers are representatives of the people and their honesty and integrity must be subject to judging if they can serve the people honestly.

The question is why the birth of Bangladesh should mean the death of democracy.

Today or tomorrow it will be known how fabulously some men and women in the government enriched themselves with public money. They corrupted the whole administration so that the government can continue in power not with victory in free and fair election but with the help of corrupt sections of the administration. Secret killings were not known to our people as politics. It was in Bangladesh a government body was set up officially allowing it kill people with impunity.

Our ministers cannot imagine themselves to be bound by law or ethics. They conduct themselves as if they have the hereditary right to own the government and the country.
The present government is above law and not under law. They can ignore Constitution and rob the election. They can misappropriate public money and stay in power by abusing state machinery to torture and terrorise the people. They can justly claim that they are not ordinary men and women. The laws are for ordinary people to obey.

We had the kind of political leaders who could not think that politics is not about making money but serving the people selflessly. We had prime ministers and ministers who did not plunder public money to be rich. They had a strong sense of dignity and honour as the people’s representatives. They were the living examples of serving the people with honesty.
The idea of looting public money did not occur to them. There were in-fighting among the political parties for remaining in power. The people were fighting for their democratic rights but had no fear of secret killing or disappearance.

In the last days of united Pakistan, the army used unspeakable brutalities as revenge because of which thousand of our people took shelter in India and formed the exile government. That was not politics but war against our people.

That is why the question that is asked is: Staying in India as exile government for nine months how could our politics and political leadership so changed that our people’s struggle for democracy and democratic leadership is resisted with furious repressive measures provoking violence? Police arrest and police violence is the politics of the government. How many people were killed without recourse to law will not remain a secret.

We are anxious to see the end of politics of violence and beginning of the democratic rule of law so that we can all live in peace under the protection of law.