After over one month of protests and over 100 recorded killings, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh has fled her country by helicopter. Sheikh Hasina, was beloved at a time. Through the years, the arrogance of power blinded her as it unfortunately happens to many in the corridors of power. What happens is that the leader and the State become indistinguishable.
In 1655, King Louis XIV was said to have equated himself with the State when he was alleged to have said, “L’ état C’est moi”—-I am the State.
However, as his demise became imminent, reality hit him and he uttered these words: “I die, but the State remains.”
As it should be.
It is with this as background that we report the events that have happened in Bangladesh over the last month when students poured into the streets with a simple demand for change regarding a new law which reserved first right of refusal of State jobs to certain categories of people. Instead of responding with empathy, the government resorted to brute force. The students did not relent.
So now, who really is the State?
An old man now, the 84-year old Mohammed Yunus, a cultural folk hero in Bangladesh, famously championed a micro finance revolution that helped to pull millions of people out of poverty through the 80s and 90s. He was sitting quietly in his apartment in Paris when the phone rang. The Army invited him to return to his country to head an Interim Government to help stabilize the country and prepare for elections. Only time will tell if in his time as an interim leader the Nobel Prize winner will bring healing to his beleaguered country.
Olivia Ingrid.
International Correspondent,
Egogonewshub.com
