AL's one year
After the Awami League won a landslide victory in the Dec 29th general elections, people had huge expectations from this government as their electoral manifesto, “charter for change,” made us believe that may be this time around, we would see a government that is committed to fulfilling its electoral promises and bringing “real” change in the way the country has been traditionally run by past governments.
The present Awami League government, however, in its one year in office, has had some failures such as failing to control prices of essentials, especially during the holy month of Ramadan; failing to make much progress in the power sector and unnecessarily introducing DST; not being able to prevent its associate front organizations from engaging in tender manipulation and extortion activities; not keeping its electoral promise of empowering the local government bodies ( The UZ Parishad law has made MPs advisers) and also breaking its pledge of not politicising the civil administration and police force. Besides, the government has also not been much vocal against the construction of the Tipaimukh dam by India and the government also has not started the trial of war criminals yet.
For all its shortcomings, in its one year, the government also had some achievements like providing subsidy in the agricultural sector; ensuring free distribution of textbooks among students; distributing agricultural-loans among poor farmers; becoming more aware about recovering grabbed rivers and so on.
The Awami League government must realize that unless it manages to perform up to the expectation of the people, the people may not re-elect them again in the next election. So, they must seriously take into account the failures that they have made in the past one year and try to rectify them as soon as possible. They must try their best to fulfil their electoral manifesto; they must also practice inter-party democracy; they must strengthen the judiciary and other independent bodies like ACC and EC. They must also have a foreign policy that preserves the country's interest. Most importantly, they must try to improve law and order, especially by taking stern measures against the party activists involved in anti-social activities. And they must implement the annual development budget properly so that inequality in the society reduces to a certain extent. If they work sincerely, they will gain the people's trust and always have their support.
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One can try to assess the performance from various angles, the net result would be a cloudy negative picture. The simple reason is, the maim opposition has very successfully drawn the picture of continuous political instability in which nobody will ever be able to see any progress or growth in economy. The picture is as simple as that and not any abstract art.
The failure I can see is that two most important constitutional bodies like the ACC and the HRC have been turned into NGO because of weak leadership, and not necessarily for any lack of policy support from the government. These can be assured if the leadership is proactive and apply its power without fear or favour . The leadership has free option to apply their moral judgment to work in these two positions. We have not seen that yet.
It is necessary to make radical change in the selection procedures. This must be transparent. Look at Afghanistan. Out of 24 ministers nominated by President Karzai, only 14 could get approval of the assembly by secret ballot. Democracy in Afghanistan is a big question mark, but they have followed a good principle towards that end.
A reader, California, USA
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