Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan ndc, psc (Retd)

There is only one political party in the country that understands and indulges in professional politics. It can think and plan ahead to achieve a predetermined objective (perpetuation of power).

Religion-based parties have a canny method of making political space for themselves and becoming a part of the mainstream political system eventually.

Our trans-port sector can never become what it really is supposed to be—an important people-friendly service provider. That is unless the sector is freed of the political grip influencing, running and shielding it. And that, perhaps, is a tall order.

Nelson Mandela had once said that dialogue is the most powerful weapon at one's disposal. Yet it is surprising to see how often we have abjured the path of discourse and allowed short-sightedness to influence our decisions.

Clearly, there is an absence of sync in the EC, and a palatable lack of internal organisation. Firstly, it seemed unnecessarily evasive about the date of the election.

“We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour.”

On the face of it everything looks set for the upcoming general election. The quinquennial event, which is sometimes a put-on to remind us that we are living under a democratic dispensation, is likely to be held at the end of December.

One of the benefits of living in this beautiful land of ours is that one often gets transported, in one's fancy, to the land of the diamond king, or like Alice, to Wonderland.

The law enforcing agencies have a lot to answer for the incidences of abduction and disappearances, a phenomenon that has assumed alarming regularity. Reportedly, there are over 300 victims of enforced disappearances who remain traceless. Predictably, the families point fingers at the law enforcing agencies—the manner in which they were picked up, as described by the families, leaves very little to the imagination as to the likely identity of the abductors.

With every passing day we come by newer reports of the nature of barbarity that the Rohingyas in Rakhine have had to endure.

“As in so many other developing societies of South Asia, in Assam too, myths and dogma take root, develop their own reality, and begin to dictate political debate unchallenged by the mainstream media, academia or larger intelligentsia.

We have witnessed the most unprecedented things in the method that the government has employed to suppress the demand for safe roads, a demand not only of the students who have been out on the streets for the last seven days but a common call.

This was the second consecutive election in Pakistan held following the completion of full tenure of the incumbent government, but Nawaz Sharif added his name, once again, to the ingloriously long list of prime ministers not to have completed his or her full term in office.

If there was any doubt about President Trump's racist inclinations, it was fully removed by his pontification to the European leaders about, what he thinks, the negative consequences of immigration on Europe.

The police handling of the entire anti-quota episode so far reminds me of the pictorial idiom that one finds displayed in many public places in China and Japan, in particular in the form of three primates popularly known as the thinking sages or the wise apes, each covering three of the five main sensory organs.

It is a pity that a student organisation with a long democratic tradition has come to be seen as a synonym for violence, tender-grabbing, extortion and such like culpable acts.

“An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain—the equality of all men.”

When we are told by our leaders that democracy is in firm ground, maybe a dispassionate look at the matter is in order. The best that one can describe the prevailing democracy is by labelling it as a command democracy displaying monocratic tendencies. It would be hard also to disagree with anyone who chooses to define the present system as one run by a single party.

It seems that America under Trump is becoming gradually protectionist, reviving the memories and the experiences of the '20s and '30s era of the last century.

Religious festivals come as blessings to people; in Bangladesh they come as blessings too, but perhaps more so for a coterie of a few, and looked forward to with both hope and trepidation.