Tofail's reaction
People of Bangladesh are not at all surprised to see Mr. Tofail Ahmed's reaction, as expressed in the print and electronic media, to the recent filing of a corruption case by the ACC against him. The typical way he has reacted is well known to our people. All charges of corruption against our politicians are always 'false and fabricated'. He also hinted that it was a politically motivated case. His political colleagues spared no time to give him a clean chit and urged upon the government to withdraw the case unconditionally. That's what they all had been doing for the last sixteen years. Politicians in our country fail to arrive at agreements on issues related to the welfare of the people. But they take no time to come out in a body, like the members of a trade union, with full force to save their colleagues whenever anyone of them is charged with a corruption case. Can we ask them a simple question: If all of them are innocent as flowers, as it is commonly uttered in political slogans, then who did the corruption in the last sixteen years ? Who were responsible to place Bangladesh on the top of the TI's list of corrupt states for years together ? And, finally, why should the ACC, a non-political independent organisation, file 'false and fabricated' corruption cases against Mr. Tofail and other politicians ? Will any politician be kind enough to answer these questions ?
If we look at our present lot of ministers, MPs, mayors, ward commissioners etc we find that in the last sixteen years the flowers that blossomed in the political garden of Bangladesh were not innocent and attractive like roses. They were either useless like water hyacinth (kachuripana) flowers, or poisonous like thorn-apple (dhutura) flowers. Because they were cultivated, nourished and groomed by the most inefficient gardeners like Begum Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina. The way these “political children” of Khaleda and Hasina are now demanding unconditional release of their creators bear testimony to the fact that they were created, not as politicians to serve the country, but as a bunch of sycophants, having no democratic or other values of life, only to blindly and loyally serve their respective political leaders.
Politics has to be managed by politicians only. There should not be any doubt about that. But can we leave such a matter of vital national importance like politics to the political kachuripana and dhutura flowers cultivated at national, district and upazilla levels during the last sixteen years ? Certainly not.
Messsrs Tofail, Shahjahan Siraj, Mannan Bhuiyan, Saifur Rahman and other senior leaders alike joined politics long before Begum Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina took over the political stage of Bangladesh. It is most unfortunate that these senior political leaders failed to rise above controversy.
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