The choice then was easy but the choice now is not, even allowing for the contextual differences. We do not have the system of recall vote to bring back legislators who fail their electorate nor do we have a system of petition by the aggrieved populace to be placed before a body which can sit on judgment on the failures of a government in power. Besides, article 70 of our Constitution bars a person elected on the ticket of a political party from casting his vote against the party unless he is willing to vacate his membership of the parliament. This provision essentially robs a member of parliament of personal liberty, freedom of thought, conscience and of speech; and leads to "elective dictatorship". If the test of democracy is freedom of criticism, and if democracy is to succeed then all fundamental rights engraved in moral and legal codes over centuries have to be respected at any cost. It is not for nothing that Thomas Paine had uttered his famous words: give me liberty or give me death.

Irresponsible power is inconsistent with liberty. Bangladeshis do want to live any more in a "state of disgrace" or with the epithet that Bangladesh is the most corrupt country in the world and the most dangerous Asian country for journalists. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, US State Department among many others have us under a microscope monitoring our political behaviour lest we join the rank of failed states. Robert Jackson (The Global Covenant2000- Oxford University Press) defines failed states as those who can not or will not safeguard minimal civil conditions for their population: peace, law and order, and good governance. Mervyn Frost would like sovereign state to be one in which citizens experience the well being of the state as fundamental to their own well being. Any truly sovereign state, for Frost, is a state whose citizens are substantially free as individual human beings and are not merely inhabitants of a juridically independent country.

The recent events of mindless arrests by law enforcing agencies of political activists, ordinary citizens and visitors to Dhaka from different parts of the country echo the sentiments voiced by Professor Iris Young (of Chicago University) on abuse of power by the police. She tries to understand some people's acceptance of the use of violence by legitimate agents of the state (which has a monopoly of legitimate use of violence) as an extension and expression of its power to ensure obedience of the people to its understanding of the laws of the country. Such an understanding could be used to define a police state where Orwellian tyranny reigns supreme. In such a scenario the government's raison d'etre to deliver political goods remains absent and irrelevant. In Hobbesian sense if sovereign statehood is a necessary political arrangement for safeguarding social peace then there can be no point in having states that can not make a decisive contribution to domestic civil conditions.

Admittedly, in the case of Bangladesh, sub-nationalism implying fragmentation of the state due to ethno-nationalism does not apply. But dichotomous contrasts in our domestic politics coupled with the myopia of power make us vulnerable to exogenous scrutiny. A senior State department official of the Clinton administration argued that not since the Napoleonic upheavals have the rights of states, people and governments been so unclear to the extent that other states have arrogated upon themselves the right to intervene in the affairs of other states. He was clearly advocating the case for humanitarian intervention in cases like Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti and Sierra Leone. But just as there is a thin line of demarcation between genius and insanity, there is also a thin line for civil unrest to transform itself into chaos and anarchy. The continuing onslaught on the Islamic world in the name of "democratisation" of undemocratic societies should put us on guard, though at present Western preoccupation remains primarily with the Middle East, mainly because rightly or wrongly Bangladesh is perceived abroad as a possible target for Islamic extremists and our inability so far to prove to the world that the arms caches caught on different occasions are not meant for furthering an incipient Islamist agenda.

The political insensitivity displayed by modern day aspirants of dynastic rule by playing cricket while thousands of innocent citizens were being forcibly herded into camps is truly amazing. Bangladeshis who have very little expectations from their politicians would still like to be assured of freedom from the vicious circle of criminalisation of politics, freedom from insecurity of life and property and that there is a light, left however flickering, at the end of the long and dark tunnel. The cost of independence paid in blood, toil and tears should not go in vain.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.