Sheikh Hasina is changing the country into a dictatorship — suppressing the opposition and harassing Khalida Zia.
NIDDERAU, GERMANY: This is with reference to Jyoti Malhotra’s article of August 16 titled “Victims of history”. Many leaders in the country want Bangladesh to model itself like Indonesia or even India. But what Sheikh Hasina is doing is changing the country into a dictatorship — suppressing the opposition and harassing Khalida Zia. The troubling aspect is the hasty rewriting of the constitution on June 30 earlier this year, and especially the scrapping of a provision for caretaker administrations to run the elections. The Supreme Court suggested keeping the set-up for two more elections, to avoid provoking social strife. Sheikh Hasina herself had insisted on the arrangement when she was in opposition. However, in office, she heedlessly went ahead and junked it. That bodes ill for fair and peaceful polls which are scheduled for 2013.
It has been decided that the constitution is not to be amended in the future. Anyone who dares criticise it may be prosecuted for sedition. Mrs Zia has already been warned for having complained about it. Merely to back such a complaint is now illegal. We should expect it to be a crime to even think such thoughts.
Sharif Lone
Published in The Express Tribune, August 17th, 2011.
