Editorial
Too many things on the president's plate
Delegate responsibilities to the advisers
The President and the Chief Adviser (CA) has decided to keep yet another committee under him directly. As it is, as the Chief Adviser he has far too much on his plate. That was not the case with the previous Chief Advisers, who had fewer ministries to look after, certainly much less than the 11 ministries and divisions that the President and CA has chosen to hold this time. Apart from that he is also heading two committees that are directly related to the holding and conduct of the forthcoming elections; advisers headed those in the past. The law and order committee, which has been set up on Monday with the CA as its head, will perhaps be the busiest committee with so many chores to be completed before, during, and after the next parliamentary elections. That will require fulltime attention, which Prof Iajuddin, wearing two hats may not be able to, not to speak of his frail health. We had in the past urged upon him to physically de-link the two appointments that he is holding, which has not happened yet. It is imperative for the president to also mentally separate the two jobs and play the two roles distinctively. One, as that of the chief executive, being the head of the caretaker government, and the other as the president of the republic, which is largely a ceremonial function. And the hub of all the activities of the caretaker government must be the CA's Secretariat and not Bangabhaban. It is also important to understand that the position of the CA has a different protocol attached to it and the ministries and the committees under him do not have to suffer the constraints of president's protocol. This restricts the interaction between Professor Iajuddin and those in charge of the ministries and the committee heads severely. We would like to suggest to the CA to retain only the important ministries under him, should he feel compelled to do so, while the rest may be distributed amongst the other advisers. As for the committees, Prof. Iajuddin may remain the head of them but delegate the operational responsibility to one of the advisers in the committee to conduct the daily business that will occupy a very good part of the day, given that there are even less than 70 days left for the caretaker government. We suggest that the president devote his time to addressing the serious political impasse that we are facing and leave the rest to his council of advisers to attend.
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