Interim Government Criticized for Secret Long-Term Deals Amid Neglect of Election Priorities

The primary task of an interim government is to advance democratic transition through a fair election. For this, the necessary reforms must be ensured. The election is only a few months away. What needs to be done to conduct the election properly should now receive the government’s full attention.

For a fair election, it is essential to stabilize the law-and-order situation and restore a sense of security among people at all levels. Yet the government seems neither attentive nor active in these areas.

Instead of focusing on election-related matters, the government is showing interest only in long-term agreements—something that does not fall within its jurisdiction.

The government is pushing these agreements through forcefully. Ignoring the people of the country, experts, and national interests, it is imposing one agreement after another under an atmosphere of intimidation.

An interim government has no authority to enter into such long-term agreements. Even an elected government cannot proceed in this manner. If an elected government signs such agreements, they must be brought before Parliament, debated, and made known to the public. With elections only a few months away, why is this government so eager to sign these agreements now? If long-term port agreements are truly for national development, then why so much secrecy, opacity, and haste?

The government’s excessive eagerness over these agreements raises serious suspicion. It seems that certain lobbyists of foreign companies are running the government.

Their objective is to secretly push through opaque agreements that protect the interests of foreign companies—long-term deals that future governments will be unable to undo. But the burden of these agreements will be borne by the people of Bangladesh for many years.

This is nothing but a betrayal of the public expectation created through the mass uprising—an expectation that governance would follow transparency and due process. Political parties that have engaged in dialogue with the government must also take responsibility for remaining silent while the government has been engaging in activities harmful to national interests.

We have seen that before signing such agreements, the usual argument is that foreign companies are the best in the world. People are made to believe that we are incapable, that nothing is possible without foreigners. If foreigners come, work will be done; if we do it ourselves, it will lead to corruption. Foreign companies will supposedly eliminate corruption. Such inferiority complexes are cultivated to push arguments favoring foreign companies, while certain vested local actors run promotional campaigns for them. But what guarantee is there that corruption will not occur when foreigners are involved? Is corruption absent at the international level? Even before the agreement, the escalation of costs itself is a form of corruption.

Foreign companies that are efficient and globally recognized did not emerge out of nowhere. They evolved through processes of national capacity-building. Bangladesh too must stand on its own national capacity. For that, we must strengthen our institutional competence. A country can stand strong only when it builds its own capabilities. This government is endangering the nation by moving in the opposite direction.