On 13 February, in Bangladesh the day of advent of spring, I was watching on BBC World television live broadcast of US President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address before the joint session of the US Congress on Capitol Hill, Washington. The US president spelled out the concerns of the most powerful and wealthiest nation on the globe in the flux of changing world order, crises of capitalist development and distribution of wealth, as well as hazards of climate change. For his nation’s current needs and future weal, the President prescribed, among other things, the following:
“Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing.
After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three. Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here at home. And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.

“A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionise the way we make almost everything. So tonight, I’m announcing the launch of three more of these manufacturing hubs, where businesses will partner with the Departments of Defence and Energy to turn regions left behind by globalisation into global centres of high-tech jobs. And I ask this Congress to help create a network of fifteen of these hubs and guarantee that the next revolution in manufacturing is Made in America.
“Four years ago, other countries dominated the clean energy market From Page 1 and the jobs that came with it. We’ve begun to change that. Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America. So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year – so let’s drive costs down even further. As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we. In the meantime, the natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. That’s why my Administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.
“Tonight, I propose a ‘Fix-It-First’ programme to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country. And to make sure taxpayers don’t shoulder the whole burden, I’m also proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America that attracts private capital to upgrade what our businesses need most: modern ports to move our goods; modern pipelines to withstand a storm; modern schools worthy of our children.
“Part of our rebuilding effort must also involve our housing sector. Today, our housing market is finally healing from the collapse of 2007.
“These initiatives in manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, and housing will help entrepreneurs and small business owners expand and create new jobs. But none of it will matter unless we also equip our citizens with the skills and training to fill those jobs. And that has to start at the earliest possible age.
Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road. But today, fewer than 3 in 10 four year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool programme.
“Tonight, I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America. Every dollar we invest in high-quality early education can save more than seven dollars later on – by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime. In states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children, like Georgia or Oklahoma, studies show students grow up more likely to read and do math at grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, and form more stable families of their own.
“Four years ago, we started Race to the Top – a competition that convinced almost every state to develop smarter curricula and higher standards, for about 1 per cent of what we spend on education each year. Tonight, I’m announcing a new challenge to redesign America’s high schools so they better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy. We’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math – the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future.”
When I switched over to a Bangla channel, I saw another live scene in Shahbag, Dhaka, of the “new generation square”, whose propaganda blitz had gripped the national media over a week of revelry. The camera was focussed on a child, hardly six or seven year old, on the lap of one of the parents. Evidently prompted to do so, the child shouted, “Hang Kader Mollah.” What a stark contrast! While the American Congress was hearing Obama’s ideas on how to improve pre-school and school education for children to prepare them for “demands of a high-tech economy” and for jobs “in the future”, Dhaka media is proudly propagating the rehearsal of hate-jargons put to the mouth of children, and on how to “look back in anger” to the past that we left behind in the MAD (mutually assured destruction) days of Cold War.
For the country’s democratic institutions, all the more disturbing was the TV broadcast of the National Assembly session on February 10, when the Speaker declared the parliament’s solidarity with the “Shahbag protesters” rejecting the verdict of life imprisonment of Kader Mollah by the “International Crimes Tribunal” and demanding capital punishment for Kader Mollah and others on the dock of that Tribunal. The judicial sanctity and independent authority of that Tribunal had already been compromised and internationally questioned after disclosure of political manipulation and executive dictation in the process of trial and judgment. The disclosure came from hacked Skype conversations between the Chairman of the Tribunal, now withdrawn, and a politically connected Bangladeshi lawyer based in Europe. The parliamentary declaration of solidarity with the lynching cry of Shahbag protesters, who “often resemble a jubilant flash-mob” (quote from Tahmina Anam’s report in the Guardian, U.K.), has virtually smashed the residual credibility of the International Crimes Tribunal, seeking to reduce it to a Kangaroo court for summary delivery of death penalty. For this purpose, the parliament has also amended the International Crimes Tribunal Act by allowing the prosecution to prefer appeal against any lesser verdict.
In the National Assembly session on February 10, the Leader of the House, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had announced that the government would amend the ICT law to enable the prosecution to appeal against verdict, and called on all to cooperate with the government to execute final verdicts against the war criminals.
She proposed to call the Shahbagh crossing ‘Tarun Prajanma Square’ (New Generation Square) as she detected a ‘smell of Pakistan’ (?) in the name of Shahbagh (a name given to the area in honour of a Sufi saint some 400 years back). She did not hide her intent of subordination of the court to her wishes, as she declared: “It is the tribunal which will dispose of the cases in line with the law. Even after that, I ask them to consider people’s aspirations in giving verdicts. We also want that the accused are given the maximum punishment. We all express solidarity with you [protesters at Shahbagh].”
The Leader of the Opposition and her party BNP, that leads the mainstream opposition alliance including Jamaat, has been foot-dragging in reacting to the proxy power game being unilaterally fielded at Shahbag by the ruling alliance. Then on 11 February, a statement from the BNP alleged that the ruling party is crafting various plots using state power to divert the youths’ emotion towards its one-party agenda. In brief, the statement talked about the government’s blueprint to confuse the youth, which lay exposed as pro-Awami League intellectuals and activists of associate bodies of the ruling party are setting fire to the copies of Aamr Desh, Nayadiganta and Sangram at the Shahbagh gathering and threatening to ban the newspapers, also giving various threats to Amar Desh editor Mahmudur Rahman and noted intellectual Piash Karim. “These incidents manifest signs of return of the 1975 one-party fascist rule.” The statement suggested that the Shahbag movement would have earned wider acceptance had the youth included issues like border killings, restoration of caretaker government system, Padma bridge debacle and other corruptions cases in their agenda. The day after, in another statement the main opposition party virtually extended its support for and “welcome” of the Shahbag protesters, with only one reservation that “a question and serious doubts have arisen in public mind about the neutrality of the protest as a slogan, much voiced during the Liberation War which lost its general acceptability due to its utter politicisation in the post-independence era, is being repeatedly reverberated in it.”
In the statement, BNP also promised to carry on with the trial of crimes against humanity committed during the liberation war, when it returns to power, and stated: “The whole nation is now united for the trial of war criminals who committed crimes against humanity in 1971. BNP has long been demanding a transparent, neutral and fair trial maintaining international standard. Had the government showed respect to the BNP’s demand, the trial would not have become questionable.”

The Indian view
Like the ruling Awami League, the opposition BNP also has now succumbed to the persuasions of Delhi to distance itself from Jamaat “to prove the secular credentials of Bangladesh” to Indian hegemony (vide “Three Questions for Khaleda Zia” in Times of India, 28 October, 2012). What a pity! Undisguised Indian expectations from the Shahbag drama has been articulated lucidly by analyst Smruti S. Pattanaik in the portal of the Indian Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Undermining the rule of the Founder President of Bangladesh during the liberation war and his general amnesty for collaborators of Pakistan after liberation, the analysis states:
“The long awaited war crime trial started after the Awami League assumed power in 2008. It was the civil society members led by the sector commanders’ forum – formed in 2007 by ex-Sector and sub-sector Commanders of the liberation war - who campaigned for the trial of war crimes committed during the 1971 liberation war. Awami League, which had led the liberation war, made this issue one of its agendas in the run up to the 2008 elections. Such a campaign for the trial of war criminals was the second since the restoration of democracy. Earlier, in 1992, an organization named Ekatturer Ghattak Dalal Nirmul Committee (Committee to exterminate the Killers and Collaborators) had demanded the trial of war criminals; it even held a mock trial of people accused of war crimes in gonoadalat (people’s court) and passed verdict. The then BNP government had responded to this by bringing charges of sedition against people involved in this trial. Both the major political parties – the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) – had at that point in time provided only lip service to the cause of war crime trial since they both wanted to court the Jamaat for electoral alliance. But the situation in the country changed in 2007. (The Awami League was led to pledge war crime trial in election manifesto, 2008).
“Since its constitution in 2010, the war crime tribunal has faced several controversies. Given that the next election is round the corner and sending the popular mood, the BNP has distanced itself from the Jamaat’s demand to dismantle the war crime trial. There has also been international pressure by interested countries to pressure the Bangladesh government into abandoning the trial.
“(But) the conclusion of this trial is important for Bangladesh and its evolution as a nation state.
“Perhaps, this time around also the Bangladeshi youth will show the way to the political leadership as was the case in 1971 when the youth made the flag of Bangladesh and handed it over to the political leadership and dreamt of freedom which the politicians could not dare.”