Draft Police Ordinance
Your timely opinion on the whereabouts of the 2007 Police Ordinance makes a passionate plea that has been heard a hundred times since independence. While I commend your earnestness and hopefulness, please allow me to be more realistic. The cold fact of the matter is that no political government, regardless of the party in power, will ever willingly undertake any reform that would check its own unbridled power. I am in my late thirties now. Since my teenage years I have seen well attended seminars and symposia on reforming police ordinances, updating preventive detention laws, creating autonomous local authorities, and establishing the constitutionally mandated office of the national ombudsman. Except for a few meaningful reforms pushed through by non-political caretaker governments, nothing has ever come of the beautiful speeches given at these symposia. The Bangladeshi politician and the Bangladeshi bureaucrat are two creatures who have an inherent belief that the nation owes them subservience for the good of all concerned. To expect such creatures to willingly give up their jealously guarded privileges of lordship over the masses is to be optimistic beyond reason. It has not happened in forty years and it is not about to happen now, notwithstanding the prose at seminars and passion in editorials.
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