Asleep at the helm

- New Age/ Mehedi Haque

by Shahidul Alam

THE friendly hug and the broad smile as we met at the airport were characteristic of the man. Modest, gregarious and warm, professor Muhammad Yunus was an easy man to like. It was 8th August 2024. He had been asked to head the interim government of Bangladesh, after the autocrat, prime minister Sheikh Hasina, had fled to India. He had just returned to Dhaka from Paris. Lamiya Morshed, his trusted long time chief of staff, piped in ‘don’t I get a hug too?’ We were all friends and had been through rough times together. Our last few meetings had been in courtrooms where Dr Yunus had been facing a number of trumped-up charges. Sheikh Hasina had been vindictive.

Given that I’ve been speaking truth to power all my life, the perception that I now had special access to the powerful was worrying. I did know many of the members of his cabinet. Several of us had walked the streets together. Joined protest rallies. Signed joint petitions for causes we believed in. We were, after all, members of what has loosely been called ‘civil society’. Over the four decades that I’d known Yunus Bhai, I’d photographed him in his old office in Shyamoli with the peeling wall paint and modest furniture. He had handed over prizes to my students at Pathshala. Lamiya and I had been with him in Johannesburg, when he delivered the Nelson Mandela lecture and I had photographed him with Madiba. I had also been commissioned by Forbes, Time Magazine and many other prestigious publications to take his portrait over the years. 

I was part of the small group of Bangladeshis who had gathered in Manila in June 2024 for the 14th edition of the Social Business Summit that Dr Yunus had initiated many years ago. Several in the Manila group had gone on to become members of his cabinet. Others, like Lamiya held important positions in the administration. While I’ve resisted being co-opted and kept a critical distance, I’ve remained friends with the group. Yunus Bhai has always been generous, and in 2018, when I had been abducted, tortured and jailed by the security forces of the previous regime, he, along with a dozen Nobel Laureates and other global celebrities, had campaigned for my release.

We disagreed on many things, but had shared values. Like me, the rest of us who delighted in Sheikh Hasina’s departure, were hopeful that the new cabinet would lead to a change in the political culture we appeared to have become permanently saddled with. His statement at the UN event on the Fact Finding Report on the July Uprising, ‘justice is also about ensuring that state power can never again be used to suppress, silence, or destroy its own people’ is something we dearly believed in.  

Hence, the disillusionment has been a bitter pill for all of us. The numerous false cases and custodial killings during his tenure are well-established. The accusations of extortion and bribe-taking are too plausible to be dismissed. The rumours of corruption by some members of the cabinet, the tenderbaji by their family members, their changed body language, the gossip in tea stalls and the snide remarks in diplomatic circles have all been on the rise. Also on the rise has been the absurdity of the denials. Claims like ‘My dad didn’t realise what he was doing’. ‘My assistant made a mistake.’ ‘It is a plot to defame me’ while difficult to swallow, are by no means the most blatant examples of pulling the wool over our eyes.  Student leaders of the July Uprising like Umama Fatema who’ve distanced themselves from the rest of the pack have said, July has become a ‘money-making machine and anyone with the slightest self respect couldn’t survive here’. Social media is awash with stories of looting, sexual harassment, even murder. Pleading with journalists to put the lid on stories, can only work for so long. Packing weapons on an official flight are ‘mistakes’ that would have been very costly for ordinary citizens. But then in Bangladesh, even in the current regime, VIPs are no ordinary citizens. 

Wait a minute. Weren’t VIPs meant to be a thing of the past? A culture delegated to museums as professor Yunus himself might have coined? Advisers cat walking on red carpets to ‘inaugurate’ a canal repair project might have been laughable, but sitting on plush sofas especially arranged at the National Shaheed Minar, meant to honour the victims of those who gave their lives in the language movement, left a bitter taste.

Special iftar for VIPs at Rohingya camps. Separate seating arrangements at official gatherings and separate menus for honourable guests are perhaps not big issues in budgetary terms, but the optics are troubling. They rub us the wrong way and betray the spirit of the uprising. Of a discrimination-free Bangladesh. It is the sheer inefficiency of ministries, unbridled corruption, the false cases and the custodial killings that gnaw away at both the economy and the trust. The clueless health adviser being clearly way out of her depth, is just one of the outward symptoms of a broken system.

Without a doubt, professor Yunus is still the only solution we have. There is absolutely no one else who can hold the country together at this critical juncture. No one with the international credibility, with the global networking and, until recently, the unflinching support of the nation. He is the glue that has held Bangladesh together. But national policy needs something more substantial than the generous application of glue. 

As I write, media reports make their way through the ether. A man being beaten to death for demanding unpaid rent for nearly a year. A school teacher being sexually assaulted for having affronted an adviser’s father. A weak government pampering to mob rule, especially ones emanating from the ‘king’s party’ or their extremist pals, hardly inspires people with confidence. To be fair, steering a post-revolution nation is a far from easy task. Hasina recruits still occupy much of the judiciary, bureaucracy, police and pretty much all other sectors of government. India is hell bent on recovering her lost “colony”. The Awami League has money to burn.  A government with a clear roadmap, with strict rules of engagement and a well-functioning cabinet would, with such unbridled support, have had a sporting chance at clearing the rot.  But as things stand, the termites have gnawed away at the woodwork and the honeymoon is almost over.

Bending over backwards to support a wayward king’s party has been much of the undoing. The whispers of corruption at every tea stall have long removed the shine off the July warriors. The mastan culture they appear to have inherited makes them too similar to the ousted Awami League for comfort. Yes, BNP too has been quick to pick up the slack, with Jamaat playing catch up.  Simply changing toll collectors will mean little to toll payers.

A democratic nation must, of course, be able to accommodate differing political opinions. But when rights are curtailed and life is threatened, it is time to reign in the perpetrators. The failure to do so has citizens concerned. Knowing the culprits are the ones who the leader leans towards erodes public trust.

There have been gains. Press freedom, especially for those employed by state media is greater than it’s ever been. Corruption, while on the rise, is way below the indiscriminate robbing of state coffers we had gotten used to, but is that the standard we’ve set for ourselves? Were we not ushering in a new Bangladesh? A resurgent rightwing that has publicly slut-shamed the women’s commission, has the impunity formerly reserved for armed cadres of the Awami League. Journalists, used to watching out for the heavy-handed responses by the deep state, seem to have forgotten responsible journalism. Wary that no one will stand up for them if they find themselves on the wrong side of a mob, leads to a realistic fear they have not been able to overcome. 

Progressive women, the ally the IG was closest to, and ideologically, the ones they should have had solidarity with, are the ones who are most disillusioned. The gap with the military is troubling. An election looms and a feeble government which flip flops at the slightest sign of public muscle flexing needs to develop a backbone. There are massive icebergs ahead and the least the nation needs is an assurance there is a captain at the helm of the ship.

Shahidul Alam is a photographer and activist.