Mahfuz Anam

What are the lessons of July charter that need to be implemented?

Congratulations to Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir for being elected president of Bangladesh. We believe he will restore to the post much of the dignity that was eroded by the former one.

In Bangladesh, we love democracy, cherish it and fight for it, but we have repeatedly failed to make it durable.

After our Liberation War, we started off with the parliamentary system of government. Then Bangabandhu himself betrayed that vision and that of multiparty democracy by instituting BAKSAL, a one-party system, and introducing the presidential model of government.

America’s most powerful attraction—freedom of thought—is under stress today.

The prime minister’s quote that I use as the headline of this column is music to our ears, constituting the most vital policy directive that this country needs to take.

A fact that we don’t discuss much, and seem to have taken as a given, is the politicisation of our various professions.

When independent, objective and fact-based newspapers are set on fire, it is democracy that burns.