Of Gopali, of Dorji . . .
SHE has been prime minister of Bangladesh twice. She has been in politics for thirty years. Life has treated her well; and fortune has smiled on her. Experience in politics has been hers, deservedly or otherwise. And yet when Khaleda Zia disdainfully addressed a police officer as Gopali on Sunday, she not only disappointed us but also had us ask whether or not she was getting her politics all wrong.
Sadly for us, it was not a politician we saw on Sunday. It was not a former prime minister we heard. It was the spectacle of an angry woman who simply forgot that she happens to be the leader of a major political party in the country. To our horror, she informed us that Gopalganj would not be there any more, that it would become history. Leadership was forgotten in that outburst. Because your rival comes from a particular region in the country, because that officer is from that region, you do not have the right to denigrate people who inhabit the place. We do not expect Sheikh Hasina to go around insulting people with roots in Feni. We did not expect Khaleda Zia to stoop to this level in her anger at the powers that be.
The image of the BNP chairperson took a body blow on Sunday. It is not her politics we speak of. It is not a question of whether or not we subscribe to her political thoughts. It is simply this: that when a politician has her utterances getting the better of her judgment, a whole country is left feeling low and humiliated. Khaleda Zia spoke of Lhendup Dorji. She did not mention Sikkim. She did not speak of India. But through her words, through her body language, she demonstrated her absolute dislike of Dorji, the first chief minister of Sikkim once it became part of the Indian Union in the 1970s. Worse, without taking Sheikh Hasina's name, she insinuated that the prime minister was conspiring to have Bangladesh become part of India.
That was quite a change. A year after her visit to India, twelve months after her silence on India, where she met nearly every Indian politician of note, she gave out a broad hint of the anti-India sentiment which still underlines her party's politics. She did more. She warned police officers not to be slaves to the wishes of the ruling party. The country, she said in words you do not expect from a seasoned politician, was being sold out. It is a sentiment we have heard down the decades. And then she served up the old untruth once more -- of men of religion, of alem, being murdered by security forces in May last year. You tend to ask: does she really believe that? And what happens to truth when a prominent political leader begins to peddle the exact opposite of it?
Khaleda Zia, in those frothy moments of indignation, held Sheikh Hasina responsible for the murder of the fifty seven army officers at Peelkhana in February 2009. In any civilised country, that accusation would have taken the accuser all the way to court, unless she had proof to back up her statement. The former prime minister believes, if it is belief at all, that this government murdered thousands of Hefajati men in May last year and those military officers nearly five years ago. It therefore becomes necessary once again to remind people of the innumerable murders and disappearances of army and air force officers and men in the years when her husband exercised military rule over this land. There are yet families who do not know where their fathers and husbands and brothers, seized in the many abortive coups against Zia, have gone missing. Who speaks of the tears shed by these families? Who remembers the pains borne by the children of Khaled Musharraf, Abu Taher and M.A. Manzoor?
Leaders do not explode in anger in public. Provocation does not push them into being indiscreet and intemperate in behaviour. When Khaleda Zia rounded with fury at women police officers in her compound, because they were in conversation with one another, and ordered them to shut up, it was not an image we wished to see. When, not long ago, she would not go beyond telling us that Pakistanis had 'hurt us' with that resolution on our war crimes in their parliament, we were left wondering. She was hurt and not shocked? She did not see the degree of interference by Islamabad in Dhaka's internal affairs?
On Sunday, Khaleda Zia's response to the crackdown on her party by the government could have been more political, more dignified than it turned out to be. Politicians worldwide learn in office, and outside it. Indira Gandhi learned the ropes in power. And she became a better politician out of power in the Janata years. Aung San Suu Kyi does not wield power, was a prisoner for years and yet bitterness has not infiltrated her soul. Dilma Roussef governs well in Brazil; and Michele Bachelet has returned to the presidency of Chile for a second term. Neither woman humiliates her country, or a part of it.
Gopalganj, or that sneering term 'Gopali,' will come back to haunt the former prime minister. You just have to wait to see it happen.
The writer is Executive Editor, The Daily Star.
E-mail: [email protected]
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