The President's meeting with the UN Secretary-General

The news of this meeting from official sources disappointed many for a number of reasons. Surely, the President was only partially correct when he said that the people of Bangladesh had accepted the January 05 elections; he was correct only if he was referring just to the supporters of the Awami League. However, the President was certainly incorrect when he stated that the country was enjoying peace because such a view represented not even of the supporters of the Awami League but only of its activists. Finally, the President disappointed many people of the country outside the ruling party when he said that there would be talks with the opposition but only after the government completed its term.

The people did not expect the President to be critical of the ruling party. Nevertheless, the people also did not expect him to go into denial over the current breakdown of law and order as underlined by the Narayanganj killings, Feni and Mirpur murders and mayhem, the involvement of senior officials of the elite RAB in killings/kidnappings and enforced disappearances that have created an environment of fear and prevailing uncertainty that the country has never faced before since its independence. The President crossed the line when he mentioned to the UN Secretary General that the people of the country had accepted the January 05 elections and had no issues with the government over it because apart from the controversial nature of the statement, he should have known about the UN’s views on the issue that it has stated many times openly.

The efforts of the President’s team, who interacted with the media after the meeting, were to convey to the people of Bangladesh that the President had achieved a major diplomatic coup by convincing the Secretary-General that all was well in Bangladesh. In doing so, they over-performed because they undermined the Secretary General, or perhaps took him for granted, to misrepresent what really transpired at the meeting. The UN Secretary-General’s Office issued a statement on June 19. The statement gave a totally different perspective of the meeting. It said: The Secretary-General expressed his regret at the failure of political parties to reach an agreement that would have allowed for inclusive elections in January 2014. He emphasized the importance of engaging the extra-parliamentary opposition and encouraged progress in social and political reconciliation.

This statement urged the Bangladesh Government to start talking with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other “extra-parliamentary opposition” parties. This is an unusual step to ask the Bangladesh Government to start dialogue with “extra-parliamentary opposition”. This is evidently damaging to the Awami League-led government. First, it is apparent that the UN considered the BNP as the opposition political party with which the AL-led government must negotiate for a political settlement to hold fresh elections. Second, the UN did not consider the January 05 elections, as a reflection of popular will of the people of Bangladesh. Third, it reiterated that the position of the UN had not changed; that it wanted fresh elections in Bangladesh with the participation of all the political parties.

The statement from the office of the Secretary General was polite and diplomatic because it also said good things about the government but on issues not related to politics. On the critical issues of politics, it put the President and the country in serious embarrassment and humiliation. It pretty much stated that the President’s men had revealed the news of the meeting to the media in a distorted manner. The statement therefore mentioned the efforts of the UN for holding participatory elections in Bangladesh leading to the January 05 elections and the personal initiatives of the Secretary General in this regard. It mentioned in particular the initiative of the Secretary General to send the Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Oscar Fernandez Toranco to Dhaka more than once to hold talks with the AL and the BNP for participatory elections in the country.

This statement was therefore very unusual because it exposed the President of a sovereign country, to set diplomatic niceties aside, for not putting facts in proper perspectives. This the United Nations would not normally do. In fact, it would be difficult to recollect the UN doing such a thing to the President of any member country in recent times. One Minister in parliament was incensed over, what he considered, the ‘humiliation’ of the President and abused the Secretary-General for the statement. The Minister was correct that the statement had been insulting to the President but he failed to acknowledge that the reason why the UN came out with the unusual statement was entirely the fault of the Bangladesh side. He and the relevant authorities, perhaps the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), would need to inquire who were the officials who interacted with the media about the meeting. That inquiry should focus whether it was an appropriate time, with so many things in politics not going the government’s way, to arrange the meeting for the President with the Secretary-General. It should also inquire why the officials, who released the information about the meeting to the media, thought that the Secretary-General’s Office had no intelligence about the extremely disturbing political situation in Bangladesh, in particular, the incident in Mirpur where the UN has special interest because of the issue “stranded Pakistanis” and would accept what the President said about Bangladesh’s political situation without question.

It is incredible that the President’s men expected the UN Secretary-General’s Office to remain silent so that people in Bangladesh would be led to believe it was a zero-sum outcome in favour of the President! They carried their Dhaka mindset to deal with the US Secretary-General Office and in doing so, were themselves responsible for embarrassing the President and humiliating the country. Ironically, they also ceded a political victory to the BNP recognition that to the UN, the BNP is the legitimate opposition in the country. Of course, the BNP’s greatest gain from the diplomatic faux pas concerning the President’s meeting with the Secretary-General was the reverse of what the President expected to achieve. The UN reiterated that the January 05 elections were not legitimate and that Bangladesh must have fresh elections with participation of all parties to restore the government’s legitimacy.