Making parliament vibrant and effective
IT is too early to say anything conclusive about the performance of the Ninth Parliament, barely 45 days old, though some of the initial signs and symptoms are rather discouraging as the BNP has been absent in the House for 17 days over a meaningless seating arrangement row. It seems Jamiruddin Sircar, the immediate past speaker who stretched his imagination to introduce the new seating plan, actually laid a trap, which the ruling AL has walked into. The whole seating arrangement dispute sounds childish and amateurish, to say the least.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's worries over the BNP's absence in parliament are understandable and she has urged the BNP lawmakers to return to the House, which indeed is necessary for the parliament to function effectively, avoiding the barrenness and unproductiveness associated with the show being dominated by the ruling party alone. And the good news at the moment is that the BNP high command has decided to return to the House following assurance by the speaker that the party's MPs will get "respectable" seating arrangements. Whatever that might mean, it seems the deadlock arising over what looked like a rather unlikely point of discord is about to be broken. We hope by the time this editorial appears, BNP lawmakers will have returned to the House.
We think, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's assertion that "broadmindedness, and not vengeance, must be practised as the new political philosophy" is an auspicious statement by her. We fully endorse her views, but the words need to be reflected in her party's activities. Sadly, there is still no sign of the BCL being reined in. And if the ground reality remains different from the ruling party's theoretical position on tricky issues, people may lose confidence in what is being said, and not done in practice.
The Speaker of Indian parliament, Somnath Chatterjee, who is now in Bangladesh, has emphasised, as is expected of a seasoned parliamentarian like him, the role of the opposition in parliament and also the need for giving it due space. This is a point that we have made many times in this newspaper over the last 16 years. Mr. Chatterjee's other contention that MPs must be knowledgeable men and women also deserves attention. This is particularly relevant in our parliamentary context where we seldom get to listen to speeches with oratorical flourish, erudition and substance from the MPs. Obviously, raucous tirades, sycophantic eulogies and shallow utterances cannot be a substitute for words of wisdom and knowledge that people expect to hear from their elected representatives in parliament.
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