Editorial
Abdul Jalil's letter to the government
We must return to the politics of integrity
It was a sad day for Bangladesh's politics when Abdul Jalil, the jailed general secretary of the Awami League, made it known through an abject letter to the President and the Chief Adviser that he wished to renounce politics and that he craved their mercy in his desire to be freed from incarceration. Jalil's move, made known at a news conference called by his wife, defies unabashedly the glorious tradition that politicians in an earlier era set in Bangladesh, one that involved untold sufferings and sacrifices on their part in the interest of the nation. This nation has over the decades passed through graver crises and yet there is no single instance of an imprisoned politician of his stature reducing himself into a state of genuflection in order to have himself released from jail. Jalil's letter is, in whatever way one looks at it, deeply denigrating to the high calling of politics and is therefore mortifying for the country as a whole.There is, however, the important question of whether or not the AL general secretary's letter was a result of pressure exercised on him by the powers that be. Such an inference may be drawn in that the move seems to fall rather conveniently within the expediency-laden scheme of things at work today. Assuming, however, that the imprisoned politician wrote the letter of his own volition, one can then easily conclude that it shows the weakness in his personality that has brought him to such a pass. In plain terms, the language Jalil employs in the letter is one of unmitigated supplication. If it was his health that worried him, he had hardly any need to drag in the extraneous matter of the quality of leadership provided to the Awami League by Sheikh Hasina. If today Jalil holds Hasina, to whom his loyalty was always unswerving, responsible for what is wrong with her party, he cannot absolve himself of his share of the blame for the mess. The letter from the Awami League general secretary is, to our intense regret, a reflection of the depths to which politics and its practitioners have sunk in Bangladesh. It is an unfortunate break with tradition, for never before has such degeneracy afflicted politics. The mettle and moral qualities which characterised earlier generations of political leaders have gone missing, fundamentally because of an erosion of moral standards among the political classes. The bankruptcy of those who have been in the centre of politics in the last two decades or so is now beyond question. Jalil's letter to the government is all the more reason why we need to return to the politics of decency, of integrity and of patriotism. A new, committed generation of politicians, reformed political parties, indeed a whole new ethos is the demand of these troubled times.
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