—Mahfuzur Rahman—

The term ‘failed state’ was coined in the 1990s after seeing a disastrous state following a coup in Somalia. While the term indicates an absolute failure of state functioning, the elements of fragility can still remain in a functional state. Thus, the ‘Fund for Peace’, a US-based think tank, initiated the Fragility State Index to indicate the level of fragility of a state. It takes data from the UN, WHO, World Factbook, Transparency International, World Bank, Freedom House, and so on. Since 2005, Bangladesh was either on ‘Warning’ or on ‘High Warning’ zone. The next worse step will be the red zone with the ‘Alert’ mark. Seeing the situation of the last two-three months, I am afraid we are on the verge of going down further. The case of Sri Lanka should have been a lesson for us, and I thought it had indeed been, but now I am in despair.

First, it was the news of widespread corruption. Many people have amassed an unimaginable amount of money by abuse of power, misuse of political muscle, corruption, unfair means, theft, probably extortion, and rent seeking too. These have questioned the fairness of the banking system, the efficiency of the financial monitoring system, and the compliance of the government to misuse of power and exploitation of political advantage. These are so rampant that no regulatory body of the government has stopped them; instead, the perpetrators received integrity awards years after years. The Anti-Corruption Commission issued no objection certificates for them each and every year. Every promotion in the senior position of the government requires a clean chit from various monitoring agencies like the Special Branch, the Anti-Corruption Commission, and the National Security Intelligence, so on and so forth. Incidentally, these people received all and easily went up to the top. Some of them earned the topmost position in important institutions. Some of them are MP-ministers, tax office officials, and close aides of the powerhouses. And they are not exceptions; rather, exceptions are only those few who, being occupied in those positions and exposed to opportunities could not or did not gather such an amount of wealth.

Yet, there is no credible step to bring them to book; rather, the responsible minister has behaved like a cleansing agent. And, unfortunately, there is no visible step by the government to reverse the trend; rather, more and more people are jumping in to join the wagons of the evil practices. Therefore, it is clear that the thieves and goons have formed a nexus with the politicians. They are pulling in other institutions, unfortunately a section of media too, to strengthen the nexus; and together this nexus, like the mafia, themselves are making and remaking laws and regulations of their own and are running a government parallel to the government. Therefore, neither the laws and law-enforcing agencies nor the court can do any harm to them.

Then there are nuisances of governance during the anti-discrimination student movement of the last week. Every day, the government was changing its stance. The ministers and leaders were making self-contradictory comments and lies. Instead of law-enforcing agencies, one of the senior ministers had called his student wing to confront the movement.

A simple driver discloses the question papers of a national level competitive examination, years after years. The government refers to the court verdicts when a subject is under its own jurisdiction. The police request the court for a remand against a child, and the court accepts it. The military uses a vehicle that has the insignia of the United Nations after imposition of curfew. The Foreign Office denies any killing and slams a comment of the U.S. Department of State. The police use ‘excessive force’ to control the student activists. Law enforcers use lethal weapons to disband a procession. The Detective Branch detains the student leaders without any legitimate order and forces them to declare withdrawal of movement. A lie is covered by ten subsequent lies. People with responsibilities behave shamelessly, but nobody resigns from their post acknowledging their failure.

There were continuous tortures, harassments, abductions, and even death to anyone who raised a dissent. There is no political opposition, only a handful of compliant. The dissenting voices are labelled as traitors, religious fundamentalists. The media better applies self-censorship to avoid its closure. The bureaucracy is in self-competition to prove itself more loyal to avoid losing prized postings, promotions, and even worse. All are in a rat race. There are serious abuses of human rights, rise of oligarchies, escalation of lawlessness and insecurity, increase of uneven development, and unemployment. There are inflations, shortages of foreign reserves. There are serious lacks of democratic practices, dearth of free and fair elections, rumours of foreign interference, dissatisfaction of a group of tribal people, presence of unruly refugees from Myanmar, and forcefully displaced persons due to climate change.

Nobody pays any heed that the law enforcement agencies cannot use excessive force, cannot use lethal weapons, cannot detain anyone for an indefinite period, and cannot just arrest people from the street. The court cannot issue arbitrary remand to anyone. The constitution cannot be read in an anti-citizen spirit. The constitution is a great charter for the nation. It is not a punitive book for governance but a statement of peace, harmony and progress. A charter of hope, desire, and dream of a nation. When the constitution is bypassed, when there are two laws, one for the mafia and the other for the mass, and people fail to get justice, the state fails. Let us, therefore, look at ourselves and correct ourselves. Otherwise, the level of fragility is so high that we may fail to stop our eventual failure.

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The writer is a former Bangladeshi Ambassador