A matter of shame

We have no words to express our sense of shame at what happened in the Jatiyo Sangsad on Wednesday. That lawmakers can stoop so low as to indulge in a free and uninhibited use of obscene language and extremely objectionable gestures is something no one in any country can imagine. And we who have since before our liberation as a nation have consistently struggled for a decent democratic order and have so often impressed people around the world with our commitment to democracy are today compelled to hang our heads in deep embarrassment owing to what our lawmakers have just done. It is a scandal that blights everything we have long believed in. It undercuts the values we have always held dear.
The people of Bangladesh, whose sense of politics often seems to be on a higher level than that of the men and women who putatively represent them in Parliament, fail to understand why the debate among our politicians must still revolve around dragging the names of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and General Ziaur Rahman totally out of context with the business at hand. Both men have played their roles and have passed on. History has noted their deeds and accorded to them the places they deserve. And no matter how much we battle over their legacies, we can do little to change history. Unfortunately and shockingly, our MPs do not seem to realise this unvarnished truth. When on an occasion where they should be speaking on the president's address to the JS they rake up the past, they remind us with chilling effect that our future is badly and perhaps inextricably imprisoned in our past. And given the near physical violence the MPs of the ruling and opposition parties resorted to together with the verbal abuse they let loose on one another, we have the sorry spectacle of elected politicians going down to the lowest levels of human behaviour. Is this the image of politics we should be conveying to our families, to our children, to people outside our frontiers? Is this the democracy we have, through long periods of dictatorship and bad governance, struggled to establish?
For every nation, an elected legislature is looked upon as an embodiment of the highest aspirations and the noblest values a society can aspire to. The people of a country (and this is an idea which has come down to us from the era of the ancient Greeks) have always placed their faith in their lawmakers where providing good, purposeful leadership is concerned. Every parliament is a living symbol of all the public good that can be attained. It is a place where great debates are organised around ideas that are politically and intellectually sound and that take the long-term future into consideration. None of these thoughts appear to have come to our lawmakers, despite our very recent experience of the struggle we as a nation went through to reshape our politics. We had expected that following the caretaker experience of 2007-2008, our political classes would emerge chastened and enlightened and would together show us a credible vision of the future. Wednesday's descent into horror in the JS has shown us, in stark manner, that no lesson has been learned, that democracy is still a distant dream, that from our politicians we really cannot expect a fulfilment of the goals for which we went to the polls in December 2008.
We appeal to the Leader of the House, to the Leader of the Opposition, to the chief whips of the ruling party and opposition to take the lead in restoring the sanctity of the JS. Unless they do that, the threat of a new darkness overtaking us will soon loom large over Bangladesh.