Return of the ‘PAK’ ghost

At times it feels like we have serious flaws within our observation and response mechanisms. And when I use the pronoun we, I mean we as a nation incorporating all 180 million plus subjects. Otherwise, why would it take nearly half a century to locate and erase the PAK abbreviation for Pakistan from our border pillar posts with India?

Complimented with a series of photos published in our newspaper last Friday, the verbatim news report read - Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) removed Pakistan's name from all the border pillars of the country after 48 years of the independence of the country.  A press release of BGB said that the BGB has removed the inscription "PAKISTAN/PAK" and replaced it with "BANGLADESH/BD" on the border pillars. The paramilitary troopers started replacing the inscriptions on the pillars following Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's order in which she observed that some of the pillars of the border areas still bear Pakistan's name.

Questions involuntarily arise, what was the BGB, also the erstwhile BDR doing in the last 48 years? And why the PM had to intervene in settling this issue? And also, was it badly necessary to issue a press note from the BGB's end in this regard?

I am in no doubt, the Pakistani people and its government has had a laugh at this latest development. It takes an astounding 48 years to erase the last remnants of a former tyrant.

The latest BGB action to rectify border pillars with PAK inscription also juxtaposes its weak intellectual capabilities as a competent and a responsible paramilitary force. Shouldn't the BGB remove and repaint the border pillars with BD abbreviation on its own and many decades earlier?

Altogether it is a sad tale of how the country's vital defence and security wings are increasingly becoming heavily depended on a particular one leader. The erstwhile BDR could have easily taken the PAK pillar issue to late Generals Zia, Ershad and former PM Khaleda Zia followed by the 4 or so intermittent caretaker regimes that we have had in Bangladesh. Rather bizarrely, it had to happen now by unnecessarily engaging the supreme head of state.

 Since this is the weird reality of Bangladesh today, I am afraid the PM needs hundreds, possibly thousands of advisers around to advise her to take decisions on numerable issues. The BGB's sluggishness to remove PAK inscription from our border pillars is merely a tip of the iceberg. On that note, as far as border pillar inscriptions are concerned, some parts of the country had become independent just 4-5 days ago. However, our civil service should also shoulder much of the failure, in terms of driving out the PAK ghosts from our border towns and villages. What were our DCs, magistrates and local administrators doing in the last 48 years?

The point, however, in the past four plus decades, we (read Bangladesh in its entirety) had become so dreadfully focused on petty bureaucratic and  individualistic interests that we had failed to correct the minuscule of past details. And now when we attempt to correct these past details, the instructions must come from the PMO.

The bottom-line: Perhaps following the recent border pillar alterations, all government ministries will become extra - ordinarily cautious in checking and verifying the PAK term used in their post independence files and erase them the quickest.
 
This writer, however, smells of cheap and dirty political sycophancy brewing out of the recent correction drive. The past Pakistan military regimes of the 50s and 60s to have oppressed and annihilate us are all bygone realities. We abhor them and we always will. But reviving old hatred by renaming border demarcation posts while turning it into news - by engaging the PM did us no good. That said - communication skills are also about thinking before speaking. With due respect to our border vigilant forces - they spoke and had issued a press release that actually questioned its professional aptitudes.

Nevertheless, the painfully past Pakistani military ghosts will remain with us until the Angel Israfil blows into the trumpet before Armageddon or the last battle between good and evil before the Day of Judgement.  I see no point reviving the past ghosts and drag them forward to that day.

Our clearly demarcated borders with India are ours, and not of India or Pakistan. BGB should have changed those PAK abbreviations in our border pillars long ago without giving it a news treatment.

Last of all, in agreement with the photos published on our border pillars with PAK inscriptions, the accurate short form should have been EPAK and not PAK. Who is there to question that? Who had established these border pillars in the first place, India or Pakistan?

The PAK ghosts out there are laughing at us.
The writer is assistant editor, News & Editorial, The Daily Observer