Editorial
Abul goes
The last hurdle to Bridge financing removed
Syed Abul Hossain has gone at last. If he is expecting kudos from us he should forget it. He should have gone much earlier; his name has been in the news since September, 2011. Indeed, it was mainly due to him that the World Bank (WB) scuttled the Padma Bridge loan. Whether the minister is guilty or not, only future will tell upon successful completion of investigation, which we hope, the government will carry out in all earnest. But as a minister, he should have exited, for his own sake, for his prime minister's, and for the sake of the country and people, as soon as the matter had come to the fore, and spared the country the embarrassment.
However, much as we blame Abul Hossain for his procrastination, we feel the head of the government has to share much of the blame for the thing to have come to such a pass. Whilst the minister in question may lack objectivity, foresight or judicious judgment that is not expected of a prime minister who has a government to run, a country to govern and a people to lead. The country as a whole cannot be expected to suffer for the inability of the decision makers to take correct and timely decisions, and in all fairness, she should have shown Abul the door. We fail to understand why she did not do so. We understand that with the exception of a handful of her advisers and ministers, most of her cabinet colleagues were in favour of his exit. Is it a lack of understanding of the gravity of the matter or her arrogance or her 'could not care less' attitude, or some other inexplicable reason that she did not do so?
As for the WB, now that all conditions have been met and knowing that the scrapped deal cannot be revived, we would urge it to reprocess the financing of the project as soon as possible. Given that all the necessary groundwork is in place, such a process should not take long to complete and we hope that the much aspired Padma multipurpose bridge project gets off the ground, sooner rather than later.
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