The potato man
NEVER kick a man when he is down, and I don't mean to join the fray when there seems to be no dearth of people who would like to pound on the former army chief since he left office in June. One embittered politician has already taken him to court, filing a defamation suit of Tk.100 crore against him. Others are hissing around the corner, waiting to swoop down. The former strongman is in trouble. He is likely to spend some time in court.
Not to say, it's going to cost him a great deal of money. But that's not why I am writing about him. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. As it looks, this particular head has tough luck. His uneasiness won't go away even after he has doffed the crown.
I am mainly writing because I am curious about this man. What was he thinking before and after he took upon his shoulder the burden of hoisting "a derailed train back on track?" We, however, shouldn't forget the timing of his advent. It was a time of chaos and conflict. Any conscientious citizen with the power to stop that madness would have done no less than what he did.
So, it's not about what he did, but how he did it. We know he has published fat tomes telling us about what was on his mind. He wanted to have a special kind of democracy for us. He had a busy mind, continuously searching for solutions to our problems. When the country was faced with potential threat of food shortage, he introduced potato as an alternative. Didn't he?
And it worked. Suddenly the country was buzzing with potato talks, and people got innovative with recipes. It seemed anything was possible with potatoes, and tables were being laid with potato dishes in many government offices.
It showed that he couldn't pull the wool over our eyes. People knew all that time that he was calling the shots. Even after the former chief advisor of the erstwhile caretaker government went to the press to claim that he was in charge, people knew who in the 1/11 family was wearing the pants.
Somehow I am not convinced he should have played that hide and seek with us. People wanted him to take over, and they gladly expected him to finish what he started. They didn't mind that he emerged as a political thinker. They didn't mind that he wrote a scholarly book to tell us about a specially stitched democracy, custom-made for us.
Then he proclaimed himself a crusader against corruption. People were impressed. Thereafter, he sounded like the chosen one when he wrote his memoir. He claimed he had twice dreamt of the Holy Prophet, an auspicious sign of being a devout man. People believed.
With so much trust reposed in him, what has he delivered? I am not sure what was his plan and how good of a plan it could be. Did he have a plan A, or did he have a plan B? If he was aiming at a credible election, did it have to take two years? If he was aiming at a cleanup of the country, was two years enough time?
This is where the first full general of the country loses me. If he were to plan his battles the way he planned 1/11, good riddance he is no longer going to command our forces. But it was obvious that the plan went on an ad hoc basis. He was biting more than he could chew until he choked on it. In the end, he was so busy planning the exit that he exited the plan, if he had one.
May be, life does its own reckoning. He pretended he wasn't in charge so that nobody could point fingers at him. May be, he was pulling the strings behind the scene, while someone else was pulling the strings behind him. What he evaded before is catching up with him now.
The title of this column has nothing to do with our general's predilection for the potato. I have borrowed it from Megan McDonald's story about what happens when bullies get their comeuppance. The "Potato Man" is a man who drives a vegetable-and-fruit cart, and who is catcalled and jeered at by the neighbourhood boys. The boys go through a life-transforming experience when they realise that they should treat others as kindly as they would like to be treated by others. They apologise to the "Potato Man," who forgives them.
Will the general please come forward? Someone needs to apologise for 1/11. Not for why it was started but for how it was ended.
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