The Awami League led government is responding to the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami’s ringing claims that the joint agreements recent signed by Bangladeshi and Indian leaders are detrimental to Bangladesh’s national interests.
The Foreign Minister Dr. Dipu Moni declared that the joint communiqué signed by the leaders of Bangladesh and India “would be a public document soon. We believe in transparency and through practicing it religiously, we will prove that we are a pro-people government,”
Part of her claim was that the deal signed with the Indian government was pro-people because the deal follows the letter and spirit of the Awami League election manifesto. And since the manifesto is the promise the Awami League campaigned on to win office, the Leagues overwhelming victory in the December 2008 elections implies that the Prime Minister had the public mandate to agree on just the deal that was signed between the two leaders.
Furthermore, she claimed quite apart from the content of the deal, the fact that the deal was made signals a broad change in the foreign relations between the two countries. Only those with an oppositional mind-set would find the deal objectionable. This the case because one of the main objectives of the communique is to affirm the need for greater cooperation to combat regional terrorism. Hence the document should be viewed not simply as a bilateral. Rather it should be evaluated from the context of regional South Asian cooperation on terrorism and economic and political development.
Dr. Dipu Moni said “To combat terrorism, the USA, the EU and other parts of the world are now working together. However, both Bangladesh and India have agreed that we need to join our hands together to fight terrorism as it is a great threat to Bangladesh also,”
Though Dr. Dipu Moni urged the opposition party to separate out politics from policy on the issue of regional cooperation, it is quite apparent that the Awami League leadership has been stirred into action to defend its policy of rapprochment with India. After all, the document is publicly available to anyone interested in seeking it out. Why then would the government make public declarations to make a public a document that is already publicly available? To combat the whiff of gated-off private back room deals between the two leaders. This is not cheap talk amounting to smoke and noise. Though costless the move is a signal: by moving to silence the opposition on this issue the government has signaled the opposition’s strength.
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