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Bangladesh: A Country Reborn!

Democracy is not all about elections, it is the rule of a system not that of a person
05:00 AM Aug 13, 2024 IST | Dr Muzaffar Shaheen
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Hosea Ballou once said that servility is disgusting to a noble character and engenders only contempt. Bengali people of Bangladesh have proved that right from 1971 when Military Generals of Pakistan occupied them through 2024 when Awami League of Sheikh Mujiburehman and his daughter Hassina Wajida ruled them with tyranny and autocracy, demolishing all democratic institutions.

The people particularly students of the country overturned fascism for servility to end. This situation is the same in Pakistan but the people by and large seem to be compromising. Bangladesh's new generation youth have on the other hand maintained their freedom with their blood. This has set in the end of Hassina Wajid and her Awami League, perhaps forever.

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Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's statue being vandalized, and effigies disfigured show the anger boiling in youth against Awami League that had chosen to make Bangladesh as a private property. Hassina had engineered elections in her favor twice and remained adhered to power through might.

She had eliminated her political rivals by sending them to jail and persecuted them through the charges of corruption that were never proved. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party BNP leader Begum Khalida Zia fell prey to the draconian law.

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Bangladesh Jamaat e Islami leaders were sent to gallows and others jailed while JI Bangladesh was banned as a political party on the pretext that it had not supported 71 Mujibur Rahman Bangladesh movement.

I would not forget to remind people that during Hassina's rule the atheist movement among qualified people got strong roots and was buttressed by power corridors. Hassina Wajid destroyed Mujibur Rahman's image as the father of the nation by killing at least 400 people and practiced all possible fascist means to bring the nation to its knees.

It was not quite possible to overthrow a government just out of anti-quota uprising particularly when the supreme court of the country had taken it back. The fuel to fire was added by her own autocratic politics by calling protesting students as ISI agents and terrorists and more so by slaughtering several people.

Even Hassina did not spare the only Nobel laureate Mohammad younis who gave the concept of micro finance by virtue of which thousands of poorest of poor got the upliftment. Hassina called him blood sucker of people and sentenced him to six months jail.

This led to widespread involvement of common people, men and women in the present anti-government stirr particularly when Hassina grappled with the falling economy of the country, which was even better than that of Pakistan last year.

She failed to handle a deep economic crisis that rendered several thousand people breadless. Bengalis of Bangladesh have invariably set an example for  others who are ruled by tyrannical autocrats in the garb of electoral democracy which is otherwise dumped below the soil.

Those alleging outsiders for vandalizing the Father of the Nation Mujibur Rehman's statue and defacing his pictures, should remember that ISI in Pakistan is already awfully busy in destroying all democratic institutions at home for last two years.

All institutions from judiciary to opposition political parties stand taste-testers. Shiekh Hassina, the ousted PM of Bangladesh should serve as a sign of admonition to those who rule with autocracy in the name of democracy. Democracy is not all about elections, it is the rule of a system not a man or woman.

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