Who have really lost their marbles?

I read with both interest and disappointment the column “When a party loses its marbles” by Syed Badrul Ahsan (DS January 8) and was left with a sinking feeling that sometimes professional greatness is indeed clouded by political passion. Rightly so, Mr Ahsan condemns the delusions of grandeur that the BNP's utterly compromised heir apparent has: the London-exile's Hawa Bhaban days are too close in time to be forgotten by anyone with a half-decent sense of propriety. The same sense of propriety, however, militates against Mr Ahsan's dismissal of any concerns about the farce of January 5 elections by terming it 'legal': let us not forget that the Pakistani army's brutal occupation in 1971 was perfectly 'legal' in the eyes of Pakistani law. I am quite shocked and flabbergasted to see someone of Mr Ahsan's repute failing to distinguish between 'legal' and 'ethical'. History records that every mockery of election, from the Soviet “people's elections” to the Ershad referendum of 1986 were hailed as being 'legal'. When decorated freedom fighters like Bangabir Kader Siddiqui, Colonel Oli Ahmed, Major Hafifuddin, Sadeq Hossain Khoka, and Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury have all called the January 5 polls an exercise in incredulity, one has to wonder who have really lost their marbles, so to speak.