The two major warring parties were at a reasonable distance. BNP was stationed in front of their office at Naya (New) Paltan and AL was at Purana (Old) Paltan. And ironically the word Paltan loosely means a military garrison.
While the BNP rally, at New Paltan, absolutely peaceful, was having musical soiree performed by the JSS artists, Awami League gathering was first busy using their energy fighting pitched battle with the police for the control of Purana (Old) Paltan.
And while a disciplined New Paltan Rally, filled with corrupt ministers and MPs, was showcasing a calm, confident, reassuring and stable presence of BNP leadership, Awami League then started an unforeseen violent street battle with Jamaat /Shibir. .
While BNP kept their composure in New Paltan, they sent their smaller B team buddy Jamaat to tackle 14 party.
And 14 party took the bait like a hungry fish. They were seen beating to death two jamaat activists while they themselves lost at least two of their workers to jamaat firearms.
Police as expected kept quite. Babar is still playing his game.
And at the end 14 party was seen fighting a lost battle with political minnows Jamaat.
Jamaat gained back all the ground they lost during the five years in rural Bangladesh, where, religion and Muslim communalism still play a big role in election politics.
The first play of the election Drama has just unfolded.
And while 14 party activsts rests for the night, tired, injured, battle fatigued, Khaleda Zia gives the war call, “respond to them in their own language!”
And another drama unfolds in Bangabhavan. 14 party scores first with K M Hassan declining to take the job. However it gets equalized quickly as BNP reportedly refuses to accept Justice Mahmudul Amin and Justice Hamidul Haq citing constitutional clauses.
In two days a total of 17 souls loss their lives.
The New generation leaders of BNP and Old generation leaders of AL/14 party go back to drawing board for tomorrows plan.
And millions of Dhakaites, sick old men, children, pregnant women, while trying to return home after Eid vacation, remain stranded at roads, ports, rivers, trains.
An election looms nearer, the election between a corrup Naya BNP and a disconnected Purana AL while these few days images will be very fresh in memory.
In the Middle of Nowhere 
October 28, 2006 at 3:42 pm
hey lets start a hippy peace movement!
October 28, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Hey Fugstar dude,
While I hate to put anyone down, but are you totally detached from reality and unaware of the events in Dhaka? Lets start a happy peace movement? Where are you coming from man? Can you please elaborate what your are proposing?
Can you imagine what will happen from tomorrow evening if AL stands by its decision to reject the President as CTG? The President cannot back down now. He will have to go ahead unilaterally (with tacit support from BNP). If this happens then my worst case scenario becomes destined to be a reality. I am not looking forward to it. I pray that my speculation is wrong. Unfortunately is has not been so until now.
Cheers
October 28, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Dear All,
The situation is very serious as most people in Bangladesh were afraid of, for months, if not years.
The core fact is that there is a systemic failure of all our politicians, as criminalization of our political system is now complete.
We are branded as the most corrupt country in the world – that is not true, our political ‘leaders’ are most corrupt, not the country, nor the poor people at large.
This failure started in 1972 and is now complete and all pervading – no one in politics regardless of party is above corruption.
So, what if they find a good caretaker govt, and there is a good election. Who all will be elected? Check the nomination list of all the parties. Who these MPs will be? Each of them will spend crores of takas as their election expenses (nay, investments, as politics is the most lucrative business of the land) in order to serve the people and sacrifice their very lives for Bangladesh !! Can you expect them to be any better than the last parliament, or one before, or one before that? What about our so called civil society, who are at this time singing songs in front of the press club! And what about the ‘political activists’ who are breaking cars, setting fire to houses and shops, and killing people for democracy?
How do we get a good honest govt who love this country and its people? I have no idea to tell you frankly.
May be we should invite the East India Company to re-take Bengal. Things were better in British days, I am ashamed to say. But that is the bitter truth. Ask any grey beard, though there are only a few left. They have died in disgust long ago.
Best wishes for tormorrow.
But if wishes were horses, I am an astronaut!
Good luck to you, the new generation in the ’emerging democracy’ of Bangladesh. I am off to St Martins Island for a holiday – if I can find a CNG to take me to the train station, and if I can find a train to go to Chittagong, and if I can find a bus to go to Cox Bazar, and if I can find a boat to etc etc
No holiday, I am afraid. I shall join ‘polilics’ instead and have some fun tomorrow breaking some cars and setting fire to shops in Baitul Murkarram – or should I ? I wonder!!
Mahfooz
The Miserable City fo Dhaka
In a Bangladesh without Hope
October 28, 2006 at 7:40 pm
Mr Mahfooz and others
Please I understand and respect all your saying so are mine but we can’t loose hope can we ?
We have seen how low the politicians can go for their lust for power and ruling the poor country.I would urge all of us to become a force and fight this.No one alone can change Bangladesh but yes few committed soul with deep down love and honestly for the nation can. I am positive and I am not loosing hope.
May be meeting with Senator Obama today and have a chat for 5 minutes with him injected the lost positive ions in me back but yes I am positive together we all can make a difference.
Lets make better history so when they repeat they repeat the good things.
thanks
Kawser Jamal
http://www.changeBangladesh.com
Any one out there in touch with Dr Yunus Mr Obama and Senator Mark Pryor gave him their hearties congratulations to the Banker to the Poor for the noble peace prize.
October 29, 2006 at 12:10 am
Mahfooz’s sign-off (In a Bangladesh without Hope) reminds me of a piece I wrote after Yunus’ Nobel:
Finally, on a gloomy December 16th, known in more hopeful times as Independence Day, the weekly SHAPTAHIK 2000 mustered up unknown reserves of optimism to bring out their cover story.
A green-red cover, echoing the flag.
A cloud cluster of words, tracing the shape of the map.
Among the many words, I could make out the following:
Terrorism Cross-fire Bomb blasts Traffic Jam Murder Poison Pen Militancy Brain Drain Fundamentalism Gas crisis Bribery Water crisis Inflation Scandal Monga Fraud Bank loot Blackout
And underneath that long litany, an impossible defiance:
“Standing in the middle of a pile of smoke, we still dream of a prosperous, stable Bangladesh.
A country where the Fundamentalists will have no space
Where we can smash their throne of blood to pieces.
Bengalis are on a cursed journey, but we still dream among the ashes”
And then the seemingly impossible headline:
AND YET, I STILL LOVE BANGLADESH
“From a wounded land and people, who won’t stop dreaming.”
Full essay is here:
http://shobakorg.blogspot.com/2006/10/still-dreamer_17.html
October 29, 2006 at 6:06 am
God this is a depressing thread.
October 29, 2006 at 7:33 am
“The core fact is that there is a systemic failure of all our politicians, as criminalization of our political system is now complete.”
I have to agree with Mahfooz. 15 years of “democracy”, so that we could have stories like this:
http://www.somewhereinblog.net/dumketublog/post/22519
and this:
http://www.bdnews24.com/details.php?id=49272&cid=0.02
Smashing up a human being into dead pulp in front of TV cameras. Cutting off a man’s hands for supporting a different party. Our politics, and our democracy.
But then again, what did anyone really expect? The peddlers of “hope” strike me as a hopelessly naive bunch. These are folks who are not looking at the ground reality any more, but only at their own wish-fulfilment fantasies, derived from their experiences of the “polite politics” of their adoptive homelands.
But Bangladesh plays by different rules that would make a Hobbes or a Darwin blanch. We have a system which can be described by three simple conditions:
1) The object of power is to make money – as much as possible, in as many ways as possible.
2) The party’s power base can be measured by the number of armed criminals in its pay (“cadres” in polite jargon)
3) The people will vote every five years in the vain illusion that their choice actually means anything.
I think it’s fair to say that more people are finally seeing these truths for what they are. The criminalization is so complete, because the financial stakes are so high.
Awami League will do everything in their power to regain the throne, after 5 years away from the trough. Everything, even if it means Desh ochol korey dewa hobey. On the other side, Tareque Zia is exactly the kind of person who will sooner take his country into Hell before giving up the trough at which he, like a pig, has been eating away these last 5 years. Go back to the DP archives, and see his interview. You will not find a person more frightening, more vacuous, more greedy. Where other people have souls, this guy probably has a vacuum.
These are the choices. This is not democracy and this is not politics. This is greed and medieval barbarism covered by the thinnest of veneers, a veneer that totally falls away at times like these.
I am very glad the Yunus-mania is finally over. People are forced to confront the true nature of our politics, of the criminality hiding behind big words like “democracy”, of the fathomless bankruptcy of our system, 15 years after Ershad.
The next three months will be bloody, but what comes after the election will be even bloodier. I don’t see even the slightest possibility that a handover of power will be peaceful. It will come with rivers of blood. Hope? I’m all full up.
October 29, 2006 at 9:56 am
sufibaba, it was a flippant remark (mine was), but on reflection i think important. people my age are being exploited , killing and being killed over this battle. there is a need to remove fuel from the fire. a peace movement would be a spiritual fix, if anyone has the wherwithall to pull one off.
Mahfooz, cheer up bhai, hope is mandatory.
I tell you what younger generations are less split along awful ideological faultlines and a little better educated to boot. I hear the music of hyder hussein putting a poetic fingure on whats going on. I see english language bookstores with decent selections of books of left and islamic persuasion. this episode is being better interrogated than previous ones.
therefore i think that something qualitatively better can be expected of this generation. its the decades long processes of social nurture that need attention. MDGs and transient factional politics are not the whole equation.
how about this. Every day that goes past, the blue meanies that frustrate us are edging nearer to their graves!
October 29, 2006 at 12:46 pm
I am an Indian and I must say that the happenings in Bangladesh are quite alarming.
It has become quite a volatile nation. On top of that is the problem of illegal immigrants coming to India with the active help of our Bengali communists who are percieved to be traitors in India.
So much politicization of the society is not good at all and will just lead to ruin.
Ultimately, those countries prosper whose people are obsessed with economics, not politics. Give people options to make more money legally and you will see that they will yawn when talking about the government and politics — something like what China is trying to do now.
I hope things become OK in Bangladesh and the dream of your founding fathers is fulfilled.
October 29, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Dear All,
Thank you all who read my ramblings as I scribbled those lines late at night after watching the terrible scenes of violence on TV as my countrymen were killing each other, reminding me the genocidal events of some failed state of Africa. And special thanks to those who commented on my random thoughts, half seriously and half in jest.
Actually, I was browsing the net for Bangladesh news and this site came up by chance alone. I am glad that I found it and it may even become a late night passion for me. I correspond with many friends at home and abroad in the silence of the night when the noise and dust of the day have finally settled down and some peace mercifully descends upon this turbulent city. I find it an opportune time to reflect, retrospect and communicate – with others as well as with my inner self.
I feel most of the correspondents here are of a younger generation – much younger than me. I for one do not recognize any generation gap, as I am equally frank and friendly with my own grown up children, as I am with my friends and associates in their late 50s and early 60s. It goes without saying that I belong to this generation – ‘baby boomers’ in American jargon and ones who have gone through the War of Independence as adults in our instance – ones born right after the WW2. (Or one of the ‘Flower Children’ in England, when the Beetles were playing in the basement of a cafe and I took part in ‘Ban the Bomb’ demos, as a hopeful young student with sparkes in my eyes, to change this world for the better) I have, by the way, 4 children, all of whom are studying in universities abroad (from Ph.D. to undergraduate levels) leaving their ‘old man’ bereft of good company and intelligent (and intelligible) dialogue with intelligent people. I may just have found a good forum in order to remedy this shortcoming.
Well, enough introduction and retrospection, I should imagine. It’s time to add a few comments of my own.
I find the piece by Naeem wonderfully poetic and full of pathos, yet with sparks of hope. In others, I heard diverse references ranging from Senators Obama and Pryor to Hobbs and Darwin, though in passing and not really in true context. I am, nonetheless, most impressed by such breadth of young minds from the contemporary to the time-honoured. But I somehow expected existentialistic interpretations of our current situation in line with a Camus or a Sartre, as in great despair there are always seeds of great hope. In the throes of a terrible plague and pestilence, there is always coming of new lives with all their promises and all their assurances that life will always impart over inert and neutral nature. And, as my Darwinian friend will agree, life will adjust, mutate and reform in order to survive and conquer the vagaries of an adverse environment. Eventually, it will flourish and replicate, even migrate and create colonies in other territories. Such are the powers and resilience of life, as I find in our young generation. As to nature and methodology of power, poletical, monetary or social, I may refer to a wonderful treatise by that name by Lord Russel. We may talk about power and its malignant influence upon the human soul at some other time. Tonight, I choose not to be analytical and forget the ruthlessly incisive logic of that brilliant philosopher and simply enjoy the luxury of being hopelessly sentimental.
Thank you, my young friends, you have given me reasons to rejoice, as also our political situation is exihibiting glimmers of hope, as the opposition has somehow accepted, even grudgingly, resumption of the office of the Chief Adviser by the President. We have every reason to be hopeful.
So, I conclude, hopefully, with my love and thanks to you all:
A Morrow of Hope
Out of the dark shadows of despair
Shall enter the chariot of fire
On the dawn of a renewed tomorrow
That shall light these green deltas, where
The peasant toils eternally between
The tides, low and high; in floods
And in cyclones, as all his fathers did
For a millenium, in hopes and in dreams
Of a Golden Bengal, of smiling children
Of rippling streams and emerald fields
Of plentiful harvests, of fulfilled granaries
As we all dream now, under the green flag
With a centered rising sun, of a morrow of hope
For this Land, that we all love and adore
That we live in, and will die for
And in our last hopeful prayers of salvation
Be one with its soft soils, united at last
In love that emits from the depths of our souls
Always, always and always:here and hereafter.
Mahfooz
maf_r@yahoo.com
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