Tender hijacking
Some days ago it was reported that some Chhatra League and Jubo League activists prevented contractors from submitting tenders at the food department. They even beat up genuine contractors to drive them away!
Now, this is 2009 and this is a democracy or so we get told by our politicians every time they get hold of a microphone. Indeed, in this country we love democracy so much that when the country was governed by the interim government (during which time these tender-hijackers were nowhere to be seen!), we all went berserk to have our democracy back. Well, brothers and sisters, now you have your democracy and with your democracy you also have a democratically elected prime minister. As expected, your prime minister was very quick to come out and warn these goons (on more than one occasion, I might add) of consequences if they didn't stop their crimes. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, her “warnings” are not having the desired effect.
If genuine contractors got these projects it would have certainly created some jobs for our people. But thanks to tender-hijacking, those jobs will never materialise. Secondly, those goons who are hijacking tenders have no intention of ever completing any of these projects. And those projects that do get completed will most certainly be of substandard and unsafe. In other words, the poor people of this country are paying for products which they will never get. Also, as a result of these poor and unsafe works many of us will pay with our lives.
I fail to understand how we can pay someone a salary to run our country and to protect us when that same individual has all these fronts which hold us hostage, extort money from us, occupy our university halls, grab our lands and even beat us to death! How can a democracy, in this day and age, allow its political parties to have their privately armed fronts? It is the most contradictory, the most absurd concept in modern politics.
It is all very nice for our PM to remind these cadres of consequences and punishments. But there would have been no need for all these warnings if the PM's party didn't have any of these fronts in the first place. It is like deliberately infecting someone with a deadly virus and then offering them an antidote to show how much you care for them!
I have said it many times before and I will say it again: there is absolutely no need whatsoever for our political parties to have all these different fronts. These should be outlawed. Any party that wants to contest in the general election must dismantle all its wings/fronts (including women fronts) and bring everything under one body.
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