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The Special Envoy in His Gilded Cage

Published : Wednesday, 1 February, 2017 at 12:00 AM  Count : 239
Syed Badrul Ahsan
There is something of the unique about former president Hussain Muhammad Ershad. In a world that does not look kindly on dictators, and fallen dictators at that, Ershad has been a great survivor. Cast your gaze at the world's diverse regions where military rulers once held center stage before falling and rising again. You have Muhammad Buhari of Nigeria as an instance before you. And, yes, you have H.M. Ershad.
Bangladesh's second military ruler, despite everything you may have against him or against his seizure of power thirty-five years ago and holding on to it for nearly a decade, impresses you with his sophisticated use of the Bengali language in conversation. He happens to be one of the very few individuals in our political world whose command of the mother tongue is polished, whose use of it is suave. General Ershad is, naturally, a good conversationalist.
But, again, as you travel back to a fresh new analysis of his position in Bangladesh today, you tend to wonder at the straitjacket he has put himself in through his inability to project himself as an opposition figure in parliament. That dilemma has much to do with the fact that many in his own party, and among them is his spouse, have hitched their wagon to the Awami League star. Some leading lawmakers from the Jatiyo Party happily serve as ministers in the Sheikh Hasina dispensation even as they pretend to be the legitimate opposition in the Jatiyo Sangsad. The entire thing is a riddle.
And if that is a riddle, general Ershad remains an enigma, in that political sense of the meaning. There are the sudden moments when he flails away at the government over a host of lapses it is guilty of. But that surely does not take away the fact that the former military ruler, whose removal from power was a long and subsequently successful goal of Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, today serves as a special envoy of the country's prime minister. That is a nicesounding job, a thought associated with all the special envoys who have served and continue to serve governments and international organizations abroad. Special envoys are a significant appendage to diplomacy. They travel, they interact with forces in the world's conflict regions. They make a difference.
In the case of general Ershad, though, the role of special envoy to --- 'to' ought to have been 'of' --- the prime minister does not seem to have sat well. In the three years since prime minister Sheikh Hasina conferred on the man she forced from power the honor of being her special envoy, the former president has demonstrated not a single instance of a diplomatic role on his part. But who can blame him? It is the prime minister he putatively serves who has the last word when it comes to defining the roles and responsibilities of those who serve her or serve under her.
Over these past few years, general Ershad has indeed been the prime minister's special envoy, nominally. But then you wrack your brains for a sign of exactly where he has exercised diplomacy on Bangladesh's behalf or on behalf of the prime minister. There is a whole spectrum of complaints he may have against the present government, but note that he has never considered the question of taking himself out of that special envoy's role. There is not a single instance of his ever being sent abroad by the prime minister on a diplomatic mission and yet that honorific of special envoy has stayed with him.
Add to that the other feathers in his cap. He is a retired lieutenant general, a former president, a parliamentarian and chairman of his Jatiyo Party even though he may be leading the larger of the two factions of it (Anwar Hossain Manju being the chief of the other faction). In a real sense, he is part of the government. In quite another, he is a leading, though erratic, voice of the parliamentary opposition, if you can at all describe the Jatiyo Party as an opposition.
And, yes, that role, or unfulfilled role, of special envoy to the prime minister remains. Obviously the prime minister scored a palpable hit when she thus snipped the wings of her old nemesis (there is that other, almost perennial nemesis too in the shape of the BNP chairperson). She made sure, thereby, that he could not fly, could not soar in the sky. Sheikh Hasina made him her special envoy but did not delineate his responsibilities. That said, though, a special envoy travels, especially when troubleshooting becomes necessary anywhere in the world.
General Ershad has been travelling the length and breadth of the country. Special envoys have nothing to do within the country. They go beyond it, something the former president has not been able to do. He has never been on a prime ministerial team flying off to distant capitals.
The foreign minister travels. So does, to a certain extent, the prime minister's international affairs advisor. But H.M. Ershad is ignored by the PMO, by the Foreign Office. That begs the question: must he stay on in that gilded cage?r
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Associate Editor,
The Daily Observer







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