It should have been for Akhtar Hamid Siddiqui to take swift action when ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party lawmaker Moshiur Rahman plunged into an uncalled for tirade against the person of the Leader of the Opposition. Decency demanded that Moshiur Rahman be immediately asked to retract his words or, in the event of his failing to do that, have his microphone switched off. Neither of these two methods was adopted. The result was a scandalous demonstration of how a lawmaker could easily make a laughing stock of himself and take the country down a path of unbridled embarrassment through rounding on one of the more pre-eminent of politicians in the country. The scandal was repeated on Monday, when Nasiruddin Pintu gleefully caused an entire nation to go red in the face through speaking maliciously of Sheikh Hasina. You ask yourself: How much lower can we go? And how soon can we put such symbols of obscenity in their proper places?

When does the Speaker of the Jatiyo Sangsad realize what remarks by members of the lawmaking body need to be expunged? In the recent past, both Jamiruddin Sircar and Akhtar Hamid Siddqui have conveniently fallen back on the argument that they need to examine the record before they can pronounce judgment on whether or not unparliamentary language has been employed in the House. That has hardly satisfied the country, for that has not been an acknowledgement of objective reality at all. The truth is always a simple affair, or should be. When a Member of Parliament sinks to a level where he can accuse the Leader of the Opposition of touching or kissing the feet of a controversial man in the nation's history, one hardly needs to go into an academic study of what constitutes irresponsible, unparliamentary behaviour and what does not. The acting Speaker, of course, did not see things that way in the House last week, which is a pity. And pity is what you see or feel in abundance these days when you realize how the Jatiyo Sangsad has in the last five years effectively dwindled into a forum where issues of crucial national importance are carefully and systematically pushed under the rug.

Speaker Jamiruddin Sircar has in an inexplicable way of handling the business of the House made it by and large a point to rule Opposition arguments out of order. That has certainly not added to the majesty of democracy. Nor has it reinforced our feeling that Parliament could well return to being the wave of the near future, the well-spring of all our constitutional ambitions. And it does not help either that Akhtar Hamid Siddiqui has developed the feeling that the Awami League is intent on creating a crisis in the House by raising such issues as will eventually lead to a walk-out on its part. We do not expect Speakers of the Jatiyo Sangsad to adopt such a questionably defined, disturbing stance toward a major political party in the House. If in earlier times, men like Shamsul Huda Chowdhury, Sheikh Razzaq Ali, Humayun Rashid Chowdhury and Abdul Hamid could bring themselves to stay clear of partisan positions and politics and thereby accord to parliamentary procedure the weight and substance enshrined in its very essence and subsequent working, why can others holding the same exalted office not uphold the tradition now?

Ah, but that is where matters of morality come in. Over the past many years (and we need not go too far back in time), the performance of politicians on the national stage has surprised us before it has shocked us. If the purpose of power remains the attainment of public welfare, the manner in which a good number of ministers have gone about their jobs can only have been an unmitigated disaster for the country. Altaf Hossain Chowdhury's highly unremarkable performance at Home and then Commerce should have been a sorry tale of the past, cast into the bin of forgetting. That he continues to be emblematic of all that is wrong with ruling coalition politics today comes from his new-found need for two new officials to be attached to him, despite the very real truth that as a minister without portfolio he is essentially a minister with nothing to do. And he is not the only one in government whose continued presence in politics worries us. There is at least one other minister without portfolio who should have gone a long time ago. And the ministers of state whose very public failures have resulted in their removal from office should have properly been considered good riddance. The cheering that might have been reserved for the prime minister had she thrown these men out of office altogether simply did not materialize, for these symbols of administrative failure were conveniently and unabashedly shifted to other departments of the government.

Overall, then, it is that small matter of morality that rises before us again, thick and unmistakable. We place before ourselves the very loaded question of why ministers in Bangladesh (except in military-dominated regimes) have never quite been informed that their services are no more required by the country. The answer, if you insist upon having one, is that traditionally governments here have been averse to doing things that might be looked upon as an admission of failure. If you ponder the issue, you just might spot the matter of morality once more. You recall the forensic skill with which Jawaharlal Nehru dismissed Krishna Menon after the 1962 debacle with China; and in these volatile times, you have the story of the extremely efficient Natwar Singh being shown the door over some Iraq-related doings. In our own Bengali clime, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman took swift action against Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury in 1973. In 1974, he asked Tajuddin Ahmed to resign, and the man who conducted the War of Liberation for us in 1971 obliged, without protest. These are instances of morality. These are some necessary stories of self-esteem we in these parts are heir to. Why are such stories not written any more?

We will not go into the cliché of enlightening ourselves, yet once again, on how the country happens to be at the crossroads of time today. But, sure, we will remind ourselves of the pains we suffer through, the everyday agony we happen to be plodding through. When a ruling party Member of Parliament instills fear in journalists, enough to compel them to leave his electoral area for dear life, we are alarmed at the bad signals being given out here. Months after the murder of Jamaluddin Chowdhury and weeks after the interment of his bones, the prime suspects in his abduction and killing remain free and beyond the reach of the law. The police, in a disturbing demonstration of physical intimidation, land baton blows on all, lawmakers and common citizens alike, and feel little shame about it. The commerce minister, also burdened with managing the nation's water resources, made us happy when he told us sometime ago that prices would come down in the market in June. This is June, and half of it is gone. Prices have kept on going up. The sky is the limit, or so appears to be the mantra of the syndicates running the show and ruining our lives. Now Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan gives us a new time frame for prices to fall. Two more months, says he, and happiness will be ours again. Over there in Sylhet, the drama over the Saifur-Ilyas affair is drama no more. The finance minister will not be ditching his prime minister after all; and his young bete noir has fallen quiet. A new bridge, on the Manu, has just adopted Saifur Rahman's deceased wife's name for itself.

Meanwhile, the Chief Election Commissioner and his colleagues hang on, just, to their jobs. We hold our breath, for unless they go of their own volition or by compulsion, this nation of free men and women will seriously begin to wonder if free, unfettered elections will be possible come January.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Executive Editor, Dhaka Courier.