Persons clothed as politicians

Bad money drives out good, according to Gresham's law in economics. So does black money. And so does bad politicians in politics. Black money and bad politicians may go hand in hand. Who are bad politicians? Those who are not politicians but clothed as such. These people can even enter the most revered house of a nation where laws are made. There they either make bad laws that only serve their interests or engage in baniyagiri or, even worse, open a shop front as a screen for doing mysterious things in the moonlight.       
Business is an honest work and big capitalists are big people. And politics is a combination of science and art and great politicians are most revered persons to a nation. Business people must oil their own machine and gadgets and not enter into politics for moonlighting because it is not their business. But many garment factory owners and other business people become MPs here and do all they can to prevent pro-worker initiatives. Worse is that some people enter the house of people's representatives and pretend to browse in the field of business which does not exist. They are fishing. On 2013 Christmas Day, Prothom Alo revealed the names of some of our fishmonger-politicians who are in this fishy business.  
Syed Badrul Ahsan wrote, 'Revelations of the wealth ruling Awami League lawmakers have come by in the past five years leave you wondering at the profitable enterprise politics has turned into.' But Finance Minister Muhit is far from small men like you and me, so it did not leave him wondering. With full constitutional right to freedom of thought and expression, he declared it 'normal'. Mr Muhit does the laundry work of whitening the black money people earn from illegal activities. You cannot be angry at him because he did not say that burglary is not normal.
It is not always that an MP is 107 times richer than he was and his wealth expands from 20 acres of land to more than 2,800. There are MPs who are real, honest politicians who do not see such rise in their incomes. Even tears well up in our eyes when we know that State Minister for law Qamrul Islam's wife now appears penniless, whereas his own assets grew by eight times since the 2008 elections. In The Daily Star report 'Politics of Fortune', we are happy to find no such gender inequity and discrimination in the families of Mr Sheikh Fazle Noor Tapoh and Mr Shamsul Haque Tuku. It is miserable for a government to be careless towards penniless people in the country.    

The writer writes on theatre, education and socio-political issues.