Why can’t you or I be PM?

Syed Rumman

                       

                                   ( First published in Dhaka Tribune on 7 February 2015)

There is a difference between power and responsibility. In the name of politics, two major political parties in Bangladesh are running after power, but not in order to take responsibility for the people or to serve them.

Politics is a very broad term, and it has widespread significance. Politics governs a system where people choose their representatives considering their policies and their ability to lead people of a particular constituency or territory through a democratic process. This democracy enables these leaders to be lawmakers, so that they may enact laws for the territory or the state that ensures people’s rights and the security of their lives.

Conversely, what is happening in Bangladesh? Can we actually call it politics or democracy? This is clearly a fight between two “Rahman” families to take ownership of Bangladesh. None of these two parties are willing to compromise.

Their intolerance and stubbornness are jeopardising the lives of the general people of Bangladesh, leading the country to socioeconomic instability. In the middle of their political blame game, general people are suffering.

There is no one to wipe the tears of these vulnerable people. They cannot escape from this power-grabbing game. Deprived poor and middle class people try their best to move forward, but in return they are the ones who get killed, burnt, and lose family members and loved ones through no fault of their own.

The question can be raised: How many so-called political activists have actually understood what they are doing? Do these political thugs, in the name of the political activism, know what they are doing? Do they realise that this savagery may come back to them and make them suffer some day? Alas! They don’t know that their own people harbour disdain for them.

Many politicians have children living or studying abroad, safe from petrol bombs or other atrocities. A majority of the people of Bangladesh would still like to see a tolerant political system, and exercise their democratic voting rights.

On the streets, tea-stalls, shopping centres, buses, bus counters, trains, rail stations, and in ferries – people are always going on with conversations about the politics of Bangladesh and its future.

We talk about the spirit of the Liberation War. With great dismay, we forget to recall the spirit of social and economic independence for people. It has not been achieved yet, long after the Liberation War. Is this what people wanted in 1971?

Yes, disregarding the political differences, the time has come to ask ourselves: Do we really want to be slaves of the two families? I sincerely thank the two leaders for running and leading the country all these years.

But a question still remains: Can’t I have the dream to be the prime minister of Bangladesh in order to serve the people? Can’t you have that dream too? Why does this so-called democracy only allow two families to run this country? Why can’t we have a system that would allow a person to be the prime minister of Bangladesh for no more than two terms?

But, it is evident that, time and again, we have to let our dream slip through our fingers, we have to let people die, and we have to be tolerant of this intolerant, so-called democracy in Bangladesh. In the name of democracy, people are being fooled, they are being robbed, and they are being enslaved.

However, we have to come out of this. We need a complete independence that ensures our freedom to move across the country and to run businesses without fear.

It is my strong conviction that the general people of Bangladesh still hope for a country where there will not be any atrocity or intolerance. Instead, there will be a politics upholding its ethos.

In that Bangladesh, you or I can
also be the prime minister, so that we may serve the people, not be their master.

Syed Rumman: Poet and Former Governor and Vice-President of London Metropolitan University