EDITORIAL : THE DAILY STAR, BANGLADESH

 

JS proposal on CTG scrapping

Cabinet approval should be reversed, if necessary

With the cabinet okaying the JS Body's recommendation for doing away with the caretaker government, the AL government has virtually shut out the door for talks with the opposition on the issue and taken what we believe to be an unintended confrontational posture.

By cabinet approval the government has spoken on the issue. It has a ring of finality before being tabled in parliament. Evidently this contradicts the government's repeated offers to have a dialogue with the opposition to arrive at a common ground on the caretaker issue. Nothing has happened since the government's overtures for talks and Khaleda Zia's positive-sounding response to justify such a unilateral step. We are surprised, we are baffled.

The impression is unavoidable, by the turn of events, that the government has moved away from its stated position of having invited the opposition to come to the parliament with its formula to amend the caretaker system in the wake of the court verdict.

Clearly the government has not thought through the likely consequences of a unilateral move on the issue that should remain open for discussion for all practical purposes.

In this context, the opposition has already stated that all doors for talks on the caretaker issue have been closed. Can the party be blamed for assuming that position?

We would still like to believe, routes to political solution through discussion have not been altogether blocked despite the cabinet approval.

In view of the negative signal in the matter given by the government, it should be obliged to restate its position unequivocally on the caretaker question. We think the government must undo the damage by unequivocally declaring that the doors for talks remain open, and if necessary, cabinet decision will be reversed.

Celebrating Sufia Kamal

She remains our point of light

Remembering Sufia Kamal is in large measure a celebration of the Bengali cultural heritage. The centenary of her birth, which was observed throughout the country on Monday, was indeed occasion for us to recall the significant role the poet played in our cultural ambience once she opted for a literary vocation in the early years of her life. She was an individual who, it can be said with pride, was our link with the past. Her interaction in youth with Begum Rokeya, Mohammad Nasiruddin, indeed with Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam were all pointers to the path that lay ahead for her, one which would define her own presence in the Bengali world of creative thought.

Surely the greatest tribute one can pay Begum Sufia Kamal is to recall the courage she demonstrated --- and in this she was amply encouraged by her family --- in emerging from a constricting conservative social atmosphere and going out into a wider world within the expanses of which she meant to give expression to her aspirations. And she did it with credit. Even as she engaged herself in literary pursuits, she remained fully aware of the poet's larger responsibility to society. And this responsibility she fulfilled marvellously well through taking part in all the progressive political movements which increasingly defined the Bengali persona after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. She would not stay silent when the Ayub Khan regime sought to proscribe Rabindranath Tagore in Bangladesh. Likewise, in the mass upsurge of 1969, she spotted the beginnings of a political-cultural renaissance, which renaissance was to achieve round itself out through the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. But the arrival of freedom did not lead Sufia Kamal into complacency. In the years that remained of her life, she waged a relentless, brilliant struggle against the forces of bigotry and darkness.

Sufia Kamal was, and remains, a point of light for the nation. That is why it becomes easier for us to look with optimism to the future.