Everybody knows what happened in the last 15 years. Corruption was rampant in both regimes.

So why this outcry against Sheikh Hasina's arrest?

The article of 27 July 2007 was the third in the series of invectives against Sheikh Hasina penned by Brigadier General Shamsuddin (retd).

I am no fan of Sheikh Hasina but I find it hard to enjoy the sarcasm the learned writer wanted the readers to share with him on the media picture of the arrest showing Hasina holding a tasbih in her hand. It is surprising that of all the scenes in the melodrama enacted by the members of the law enforcing agencies, this particular one has caught the writer's attention.

One cannot but agree with the views of the writer on the national character of the people. He wrote, "We decry the leader for all his failings and follies, which are in plenty and join the opposition chorus in condemning him and demanding not only his immediate fall from power but also his wholesale burial as political garbage." But being an ordinary citizen I fail to find anything wrong with this quality of ours. Remaining in total seclusion for a certain period of time may help a politician change his/her character and attitude towards the people. In neighbouring India, the distinguished Indira Gandhi had to suffer indescribable humiliation at the hands of the Indian people for her excesses, with her party driven asunder. Even when she managed to get a seat in parliament, she was not allowed to occupy the seat and had to leave with tearful eyes. But she staged a comeback after a couple of years and continued as prime minister of the biggest democracy in the world till her death.

There is no denying the fact that "the euphoria with the caretaker government is ebbing away fast " but the reason thereof is not the existence of a hint of the military jostling with power but the total failure of the government to bring down or check the inflationary spiral of the prices of the essential commodities. I would like to advise the decision makers to rummage through the files left behind by the late SAMS Kibria to educate themselves on how the theories of economics can be put to the solution of practical problems. There is some element of truth in the statement that "there is a surfeit of sympathy for Sheikh Hasina", but that is not for anything else but for her correct and astute leadership and pragmatic approach in maintaining an equilibrium in the demand and supply of daily necessities.

Finally, I cannot but wholly disagree with the writer and his likes when they try to put both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia on the same plane. Sheikh Hasina failed and failed miserably to put a halt to the deteriorating

law and order situation in the country but was known, both at home and abroad, to have run the government in the most efficient manner with tidbits of corruption (as compared with her successor ) and malpractice here and there. On the other hand, Khaleda Zia started her government with the sole aim to destroy all the institutions of the country by remaining steeped in corruption and corruption only.

Rezaul Karim, Malibagh, Dhaka