Priorities of new govt
A lot of commitments have been made by the Awami League/ grand alliance in its electoral manifesto.
The person who drafted the manifesto seems to be very wise because he set specific targets instead of vague promises which the electorate liked & voted the grand alliance to power. So far so good.
But it is an irony of fate that most political parties did not live up to their promises in the past which frustrated people & frustration led to desperation.
People of Bangladesh are a very simple folk & they remain content if they just get the basic necessities of life. An ordinary citizen just wants prices of food items within their reach, electricity in their home & workplace and good law & order situation. During the past tenure of the Awami League it succeeded in maintaining reasonable price stability, despite occasional floods & resource constraints. But where it miserably failed is law & order situation. The Awami League party men & their loyalists indulged in indiscriminate extortion, terrorism, repression etc which antagonised the masses & voters turned against the Awami League in 2001 election & voted out the party and put the BNP back to power.
The BNP won a massive victory but despite serving the public its leader & cadres considered it their right to plunder national wealth. At the initial stage of the BNP government, law & order was not at all satisfactory.
So the Awami League government should take a lesson from past mistakes of both the Awami League & the BNP. The top priority of the govt. should be to bring down food prices to a reasonable level & arrest the deteriorating law & order and make electrify easily available to homes & factories.
The govt. is very fortunate in some ways. Due to fall in international market, wheat prices have come down substantially, prices of soybean oil has also recorded a fall, prices of rice although showing a decaling trend, should fall further. These are the principal challenges for the govt.
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