Hasina’s fears are not without reason

Hasina’s fears are not without reason
Editorial By New Age ,Dhaka,July 17
Although the interim government has claimed that the most recent restrictions imposed on the movements of former prime minister and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina, who was barred from going to Chittagong on Thursday to visit the victims of the recent landslides and then forced to postpone a private trip to the United States on Friday, are for the sake of proper investigation into the two extortion cases that were filed against her on June 13, Hasina herself has expressed an apprehension that the cases against her have been filed to keep her out of the next general elections and thereby to force her out of the political process. This paper, which believes in the rule of law that necessitates equal rights for all and the equal application of the law for all citizens, has consistently maintained that all corruption suspects, be they civil servants or former heads of government, should be prosecuted by the state through the due process of law and duly punished if found guilty of such charges. Hence, if after proper investigations the state wishes to pursue the cases against Sheikh Hasina, and if she is found, through proper trials, guilty of the crimes that she has been accused of, this paper will unfailingly support, for the sake of upholding the rule of law, the implementation of any punishment that is handed down to her by the courts.
However, given this military-backed government’s earlier attempts at keeping Hasina outside the country and of trying to send another former prime minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia into exile, thus expelling the country’s two top political leaders from national politics, we have reason to find substance in Hasina’s apprehension. This anxiety, on our part, is made worse by the government’s visible enthusiasm for introducing a political order that would leave both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia out of the equation. While we feel that the democratisation of the political parties in this country is absolutely imperative, we also believe that democratic reforms within the parties must be initiated and carried out by the parties themselves. It is absolutely vital that the members and activists of the Awami League and the BNP are allowed to select their leaders and drive their own reform agendas, rather than such decisions being taken and then forced upon the parties by an unelected government of non-politicians. Any imposition of external decisions and programmes relating to reforms on the parties, we feel, will not only fail to result in their much talkedabout and much desired democratisation, but will rather aggravate the existing chaos within the parties and create a political vacuum in the country, neither of which can have any positive impact on the flourishing of democracy within the parties and in society.