In the Court of Firaun

Based on some notes on a Hasina performance at lse and delivered in a post hoc looking at notes, navel gazing, stream of conciousness style.

The QnA was prelude to an interesting evening with mates thinking about bangladesh and the stagnacy of thought there. Uk citizens rarely face agents of bangladeshi mayhem face to face. This was a chance.

Pola uddin was not a good chair she lacked backbone and the political position to be ruthless and paxmanesque. An unscheduled West bengali professor from the lse vigourously praised hasina on the quality of the lunch she provided him last year when he was in desh. I think Hasinas crew hegemonised the student society throughout the proceedings.

Her speech was read out in english, she struggled with it like i must have read out arabic to my maulvi saab when i was little, Allah grant him long life! I dont think she had written it herself. In QnA she complained that she been affected(deafened in one ear) by a grenade attack so she needed a lot of real time explanation/translation/filtration/prepping(?) of the audiences questions from both pola uddin and the prof dude. I swear that when she sat down after her speach and opened her mouth to laugh she resembled one of those proffessionals who cast spells on people.

The Speech consisted firstly of the great acheivements of her party and secondly of how its the only democratic party and the sins of the previous government. She refers to the bnp not by name but as a quasi military force. Next she lauded her own uncompromising leadership to foil nefarious plans,read out a lot of bulletpoints on what her party will do when it is elected, makes an effort to get in key buzz words of secular democracy, internal party democracy and what not. It wasnt very interesting, but she knew she was at the lse and 'i am the daughter of..' arguments wouldnt work. The funniest bits of her proto-manifesto were that the Awami League would have an independant foreign policy and institute egovernance.

she claims satelite tv, mobile telephony and even microcredit as her parties innovation (though reading the lectures of akhtar hameed khan, the father of development in bangladesh, AL people were interested in the Comilla model before the 1970 elections) and that between 96-2001 there were no session jams in the educational system. I dont have the info to verify. but given her 11 000 then 22 000 figure for prisoners of war/razakars in the same sentance and the 21 000 figure she gave a day later at soas i think she has as much numeracy skills as her late father (this is a problem wrt our science being taken seriously).

Hasina dodged the harder questions either because she failed to detect their subtelty or because she has no shame. Questionners from the audience were selected by pola uddin on some femenist criteria, even they had no chance to tell her she wasnt answering the q. It was an unequal platform.

Hasina was quite sly with the dr yunus/shudkha issue. interesting. i guess thats how ideas move on and bouce around. Nobody in the secularist camp talks about micro credit as a bad thing untill Dr Y wins a prize from some white people and has a go at politics. Now her party people dont beleive in that form of microcredit and are telling their urban allegedly educated followers to actually investigate whether there is much poverty alleviation going on there. (Grounds 27% interest 10% forced savings, first installment due 1 week after loan is taken) Therefore the sheep following her can claim moral and islamic ethical supremacy over any party that Dr Yunus might form.

Hasina invented a word 'abusement' (how the sharia casues ladies in villages to commit suicide) which an inarticulate guy then adopts in his question (which is show 'me your proof!' to which hasina points to a case study, not to religious text, taking advantage of the guy's simplicity to avoid upsetting muslims). During his attempt to ask a question, an audience member (blind awami leaguer) accused this guy from EAST LONDON of not being a bengali and physically accosted him. I think he might bump into a lamp post some time soon.

On religion in general she did the liberal fudge on Islam. 'Our people are religious minded'' ' the people need to know what Islam is' 'religion shouldnt be used to punish people'. Patronising and ignorant remarks. Clearly this wasnt going to lead onto a discussion of the systemmatic destruction of the bengali islamic leaning intelligensia and their replacement with a bunch of whores.. oh well.

more questions

A deshi tory (WTF?!?) asked her why all the parties couldnt ally on issues like anti poverty and terrorim. she fudged it by saying they could not deal with parties that nurture terrorism. Then she tries to convince us that her mohajote (awami league plus all the loony lefties you can imagine) was a unity platform for that dialogue.

Arab dude asks about the roadmap for elections. she personally wants them in june this year (the sooner the better fro the awami league cos all the bnp are in jail!). she says 'why do they need 18 months, we liberated our country in 9 months' <>

She played carefully with caretaker government issues, defended student politics (she was a DU student in 71) and blamed all the ills of the society on military and quasi military(BNP) governments.

Awami leaguer love-in basically.

TBH my expectation was low and i wasnt suprised. I was a little suprised by the amount of blind supporters she still has and the vengfulness some people my age (freisheis) feel for razakar demons, but i should know better by now.

To her credit she was quite adept at avoiding anwering questions and telling people what she thought they wanted to hear. I hope you realise how hard it is for me to make that compliment.

I dont trust her. I wish i could point to a better alternative stream but i cant. the bnp can't even muster a website. Bangladesh is pretty screwed if these kinda folks are its leaders. these people who change what they say every day, lead people to beleive they are secular one day, make alliance with religious people the next, say that the shariah causes girls to commit suicide the next moment and then preach about secular democracy. I would have liked the Awami Muslim League back in the day, Suhrawardhy, Maulana Bhashani, Ataour Rahman Khan. Giants. Now its Goats.

I am thankful to god that they have no power over me, that i have the power to know who i am and refuse to let these people define me and my history.

I am still a political orphan and would appeal to people not to be cast under her spell. hate them , despise them or grudgingly accept them, the AL are strong now, empowered by its leaders shenanigans in the west, by singing 'Talibanisation' to the think tanks of london and washington, by the clumsiness of the CTG attempts to take these ladies out and londoni money.

People will vote for them in an emotional way because they feel that its Mujib who got them a country. Sherebangla, suhrawadhi at co dont even get a look in, however superior they were. I feel that so long as the deshi people are kept in the dark about their history and educated badly many of them will continue to beleive the history they are fed.

There were no questions on corruption, no answers to questions on whether she deserved to be head of her party on merit or whether she had personalised bangladesh too much.

LSE Bsoc you got hijacked by Hasina propaganda!

oh well.