Editorial
Lessons from Dhaka summit
It's the process that comes under question
The long-term and short-term fallout from the less than expected success of the Hasina-Manmohan summit will take some time to be gauged. But there is no hiding from the fact that failure to agree on the most important item of the agenda has dealt a severe blow to the prospect of growth of our bilateral relations.
While we will continue to investigate as to why the summit failed, we would to like to comment on the obvious flaws in preparations on the Bangladesh side.
We have to point out that our process of preparation depended far too much on a few individuals keeping out the whole machinery of the government that could have been put to use for this vital summit. Most of the time, ministries like water resources, commerce and trade, land, finance, etc. were kept out. The draft treaties were never placed before the cabinet either, at the draft stage, and more importantly, before finalisation.
The parliamentary standing committee on foreign affairs was totally kept in the dark about the whole process.
We strongly believe that it was not the proper way of preparing for this all-important bilateral summit. No attempt was made to take the public into confidence at any stage of the preparation process, knowing full well that a strong public support would be essential for any deal with India to be durable. As for media briefing, the less said the better. Except for some last-minute discussion, media was ever given any information so that the public could be kept appraised of the evolving development.
The lessons we draw from the visit is that unless the process is transparent and inclusive, the outcome can only be a greater embarrassment for the government than it otherwise would have been and the outcome truncated and disappointing as it has been.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments