Dr. Badruddoza Chowdhury Calls for a Government of National Unity

(Update below)

Stunning, absolutely stunning:

"President of Bikalpa Dhara Bangladesh (BDB) Prof AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury yesterday called for a “government of national consensus” for next ten years comprising all democratic and patriotic political parties that believe in common development programmes.

"In order to bring peace and prosperity in our country and to prevent hartal, demonstrations, damage of public property and bloodshed in the post-election period, we need a government of national consensus for at least ten years," Badruddoza Chowdhury said at an iftar party at city's Sheraton Hotel.

The former president arranged the iftar party in honour of leaders of political parties and civil society and diplomats.

Political party leaders including Awami League (AL) acting President Zillur Rahman, Jatiya Party (JP) chairman HM Ershad, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD) President Hasanul Haq Inu, and BNP leader Lt Gen Mir Shawkat Ali appreciated his proposal of bringing unity among the political parties."

(Emphasis added and with reason!)

I hear Anwar Choudhury is highly "patriotic" being brown and Bengali and all that.....

I'm stunned, but not surprised since the grapevine was talking about Dr. B Chy being more likely to head the "national unity government" than Dr. Kamal I've-never-won-an-election Hossain anyway.

But ten years? That's a bombshell and a half. Well maybe not if you've been reading our (metaphorically) castrated friend Mr. Motiur Rahman regularly...

Plus, exactly how will this national government be formed: elections or elite politicking at diplomat-attended iftars? What form will it enjoy: parliamentary or presidential or a mixed one? What relation will it enjoy with the judiciary: separate as promised or superior as always? What about the NSC which is yet to be outlined or even discussed? And lastly, where exactly does a former washed-out corrupt dictator fit into the scheme of things?

All these are questions left unanswered and in this terrible media environment, unasked.

Update: Saif of Addafication has also written about this iftar. But even more interesting is his under-appreciated piece labelled "Command and Control", which tackles the problems of non-democratic governments from pure efficiency angles without ethical rhetoric:

"The tendency is to think about “controlling” such unrest through centralized decision-making. The centralized decision maker, in this model, decides what emotions are worth conceding to and what emotions deserve to be crushed. May be it’ll work, for a while, who knows? But surely, when your system is composed of 150 million individuals living in 147570 sq km, it has to be conceded that no centralized decision-maker has or ever will have enough information for effective decision-making over a sustained period of time. The only workable alternative is a value-infused decentralized system with accountable nodes of decision-making. And to be able to perform the necessary work of information-gathering and processing effectively, the system has to be a participatory one."

Amen.