Pinto Ka Gussa Kyon Aata Hai? Habibul Haque Khondker

PINTO KA GUSSA KYON AATA HAI?
(What Makes Pinto Angry?)

Habibul Haque Khondker

Published on 01 April, 2006

[This short paper was written sometime ago when the BNP government took disciplinary action against one of its own Member of the Parliament, Mr. Nasiruddin Ahmed Pinto who was caught while snatching auction papers. Now that the national election is approaching and horse-trading for nominations is about to begin this may be of interest to your readers]

With apologies to the Saeed Akhtar movie of 1980, I want to ask a simple question: Why is Mr. Nasiruddin Ahmed Pinto, an honourable Member of the Parliament in Bangladesh angry? In the movie version Naseeruddin Shah played the role of Albert Pinto and he had good reasons to be angry about life. Our Mr. Nasiruddin, an honourable MP also had good reasons to be angry at life in general and politics in particular.

Mr. Nasiruddin Ahmed Pinto is a poster boy of the new brand of politics in Bangladesh. The honourable MP represents certain currents of our politics nicely. To dismiss him as a muscleman, as a hooligan who was not even spared by the mastan-friendly BNP government is the kind of public relations stunt, the administration wants to pull very badly, especially now that the law and order situation is worsening even compared to the last days of Awami League rule. It is only a gullible who will fall for this sort of half-baked stunt. One really has to ask a simple question: how is Mr. Nasiruddin Ahmed Pinto possible?

It is not too long ago, Mr. Nasiruddin Ahmed Pinto was made the President of the BNP�s student faction, JCD to the utter disappointment of many of the genuine BNP student-wing loyal activists. Some of them in exasperation set fire to their diplomas to protest that choice. With hindsight BNP leadership should have heeded those protests. If you go back few years back when Begum Khaleda Zia was in her first term as Prime Minister, she publicly declared that her student friends were good enough to resist the opposition party, namely, Awami League. That was an open endorsement of student activism (read, hooliganism). Other parties were a shade subtler. Student politics is nurtured by the leading political parties not only to produce future leaders but also to harden hooligans and �mastans� to be used for extra-legal purposes.

The mastanization or criminalization of politics has to be traced to its roots. �Mastans� (hooligan is not the right word, here) always played a part in the colorful political culture of Bangladesh. In order to take part in the political demonstration, fighting the oppression of a colonial or an authoritarian regime, you have to be a tough person. Politics in Bangladesh is not for the weak-hearted. You have to be a Motia Chowdhury, someone who commands respect from her party members for her uncompromising stances and yet not afraid to fight it out on the streets. Since streets are an important part of our political space, you need characters of strength to fight it out in the open as street-fighters. And since not all politicians have the courage of Mrs. Motia Chowdhury, one has to scout for some real tough guys. So it is not too difficult to understand why political leaders of the major parties are favorably disposed towards the toughies. But the trouble begins, when top leaders loose sight of the difference between being tough and being a thug.

There is a huge difference between one�s right to protest in public and becoming a public enemy. Respect for law is the minimum the law-makers can show. When an honourable MP even before taking oath as an MP rushed to the MP Hostel to grab a choice suite, rather than official criticism, Secretary General of BNP Mr. Mannan Bhuiyan had defended the act in a BBC interview by saying that those MPs were from outside Dhaka and had no place to stay in Dhaka (presumably they spent all their money on getting themselves elected to the Parliament and were left with nothing to foot the hotel bill!). Mr. Nasiruddin Ahmed Pinto, one of the first to grab a choice suite at the MP hostel, was elected from Dhaka city.

Newspaper accounts of the occupation of Dhaka University Halls (residences) also put Mr. Nasiruddin Ahmed Pinto as the leader of such unlawful campaign. No eyebrows were raised. The BNP leadership was guilty if not of commission (it is difficult to establish who ordered him to take over the student halls) but clearly of omission.

The most important element of a successful democracy is a commitment to the rule of law. In Bangladesh politics, there is a clear tendency not only to defy the rule of law but worse, to replace it by the rule of jungle law. It is sad that the successive democratically elected governments have only paid lip services to the separation of judiciary in a bid to strengthen the norms of democracy. A national consensus must be forged towards creating an independent and fair judiciary. And this is where our prominent jurists such as Dr. Kamal Hossain who happens to be the framer of our Constitution, and a person of high integrity can play an effective role.

Now, the million dollar question: why did our electorate vote for and elect Mr. Nasiruddin Ahmed Pinto who already earned notoriety as a hooligan? Was he perceived to be a lesser evil than his major rival Mr. Haji Salim of Awami League (previously of BNP)? There was no allegation of snatching of auction papers against Mr. Salim during the tenure of the Awami League. But he did have a checkered track record that went far back to the earlier BNP rule. Why the leading political parties of Bangladesh gave such individuals with such notoriety nominations? What does it say about our political culture? I invite you to ponder this question. I would like to invite all the leading parties to commit to the principle that no known �goonda� or shady character will get nomination in the forthcoming national election. It is time not only for Mr. Nasiruddin Ahmed Pinto to be angry, but for all of us to be resentful and take some part in the collective guilt.

The author is a sociologist at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi. Previously he taught at the National University of Singapore.