PLEASURE IS ALL MINE
Columnist, The Daily Star
My first impression of Bangabandhu dates back to around the mid-sixties. A helicopter service had been in operation between Dhaka
Last Tuesday, from the northerly Himalayas, a blustery wind cascaded down to Haripur area of Thakurgaon leaving a patch of ruins in
The seasonal discussion on corruption is back in full swing following the release of Berlin-based Transparency International's global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), 2018.
We have known democratic pluralism, pluralistic democracy and multi-party system to be synonymous terminologies. But is it as simplistic as that? Conceptually and ideally, it is; but in practice and real-world situations, it may not be so!
With at least 27 new faces and only a few septuagenarians around, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was greeted on her re-election to a record fourth term at Gono Bhaban on Tuesday.
It is the huge gaps in the numbers of votes polled by the winners and the losers in the 11th national election that apparently unveiled a “controlled and patterned” nature of the process of polls.
If almost every past election in Bangladesh had been a test case for democracy, the one the nation is going to in two days' time is a veritable litmus test for the country's democratic future.
It was for the BNP leaders “a strategy” of filing multiple sets of nomination papers to cover the contingency of rejections. This came in the way of 141 party nominees out of 696 who had applied to the EC for a go-ahead.
Tit-for-tat goes on between the US and Turkey with surprising frequency and fury. Ankara has declared a “boycott” of all electronic goods from the US. This is in retaliation—of a narrower calibration—to Washington having doubled tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from Turkey.
This is entitled not to a freaky triumphalism but to a celebration of human compassion for the collective risk to lives on roads. This found a powerful utterance and demonstration through our tender-aged progeny's intelligent intervention for a few days.
The Western press by and large has called the elections in Pakistan “staged managed”—meaning the military had a hand in it.
Dhaka, once the Venice of the East by virtue of being surrounded by four ebullient rivers, is now an urban behemoth. In our university days, going home on a long vacation, we would be literally pining for Dhaka after a couple of weeks of sojourn with parents.
Last week has been a happening spell, in an untoward sense, for the public health landscape. From Chittagong to Khulna to Rangpur, a litany of serious lapses, irregularities and unauthorised hospital activities has come to light.
People in high places are privileged with getting away with minor indiscretions, especially in a developing country.
A three-man BNP delegation's visit to New Delhi on June 3-10 has raised more questions than provided answers for. This trip was led by Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, member of BNP National Standing Committee; Abdul Awal Mintoo, the party's vice chairman; and Humayan Kabir, its international affairs secretary.
Sir Winston Churchill, with his superbly imaginative and insightful mind, once said something like this: “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” That means use vitriol, threats, intimidation, even go eye-ball to eye-ball if you must, but do your utmost to stay away from war.
It may appear as though we are looking for a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, but believe me, it's not as funny as that. It is actually a desperate disease calling for a desperate remedy.
That Bangladesh offered a safe haven to close to a million Rohingya refugees fleeing wholesale persecution from Myanmar put Dhaka on a high moral pedestal.