Lock, stock and a resignation (Part 2)

In an earlier piece published on Saturday, I wrote that a state minister chasing suspected drug addicts through a Dhaka neighbourhood, pistol in hand and gleaming white sneakers on his feet, could have walked straight out of a Guy Ritchie black comedy.

Two days later, the film acquired a fitting ending.

The protagonist is resigning. Or, more precisely, he has announced that he will announce his resignation.

Bangladesh's State Minister for Liberation War Affairs, Ishraque Hossain, took to Facebook at around 8:40 am on Monday to inform the nation that he would formally declare his departure at the National Press Club at 2 pm.

A straightforward resignation would have been disappointingly conventional. Ishraque prefers a plot.

By then, the country had endured nearly 24 hours of denials, counter-denials, press statements, audio messages, constitutional interpretations and threats of legal action against journalists.

Dhaka University professor Asif Shahan captured the absurdity perfectly in two words on Facebook early Monday morning: "Schrodinger's resignation."

Indeed. The minister was simultaneously resigning and not resigning. The prime minister had asked him to leave, except apparently “he had not,” as Ishraque claimed in a roundabout way. The reports were ‘malicious fabrications,’ except that their central claim was about to become the subject of a press conference.

Even Schrodinger's cat would have struggled to follow the proceedings.

And this was merely the ending. The opening scene had been considerably more entertaining.

The minister who couldn't resign

On Sunday afternoon, reports emerged that Prime Minister Tarique Rahman had asked Ishraque to resign following his extraordinary armed expedition in Gendaria the previous day. Prothom Alo, the country’s most respected daily newspaper, broke the news.

Government sources told us [Daily Waadaa] that the prime minister had summoned him after a cabinet meeting and instructed him to step down. One source claimed Ishraque had subsequently drafted a resignation letter at the Prime Minister's Office, although its submission remained unconfirmed.

An uncomplicated story, one might think. Not in Ishraque's universe.

His office issued an indignant statement describing the reports as false, baseless, fabricated and politically motivated. No resignation instruction had been issued, it insisted. There was no question of resignation.

The statement demanded corrections and threatened legal action against the offending journalists.

Ishraque then circulated an audio message asking reporters not to believe the rumours.

His unusually languid delivery added another peculiar dimension to an already peculiar evening. Here was a minister apparently facing dismissal, sounding less like a politician in crisis than a man reluctantly answering his telephone after being awakened from a nap.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Television briefly broadcast a ticker saying the prime minister had ordered his resignation. It later aired another ticker carrying Ishraque's denial. 

The state broadcaster BTV had effectively joined the cast. Then, shortly after midnight, came a remarkable Facebook post.

Any instruction from the prime minister directing a cabinet member to resign, Ishraque explained, was conventionally binding and required immediate implementation. There was no need to verify such instructions through third, fourth or more distant parties.

This was an impressive constitutional lecture from a man whose office had just threatened journalists for reporting that precisely such an instruction had been issued.

By Monday morning, the suspense was over.

Ishraque announced his impending resignation. He also promised to fight drugs with a hundred times more enthusiasm as a BNP activist.

He took a swipe at civil society critics celebrating his departure, suggesting that those living abroad should return to Bangladesh and participate in future political movements.

Then came the slogan: "Not a minister, but drug eradication!" The ministerial portfolio was apparently dispensable….the personal crusade probably was not.

A gun, six suspects and no drug lord

The original spectacle deserves a brief rewind.

On Saturday, Ishraque, also the MP for Dhaka-6, arrived near Gendaria railway station with associates, a loudspeaker and a pistol. Videos showed him chasing suspected drug users. Armed men accompanied him. One associate kicked a young man. Another person threatened to shoot.

Six suspects were eventually handed over to police.

The footage was uploaded to Ishraque's own Facebook page, apparently as evidence of decisive leadership.

It was certainly decisive television.

As I argued in my earlier piece, Guy Ritchie would have appreciated the composition. The improbable protagonist. The low-level suspects. The weaponry. The chaotic pursuit. All that was missing was Jason Statham delivering a deadpan observation about the collective intelligence of everyone involved.

But this was not Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It was Dhaka, and the man holding the pistol was a member of the government.

Bangladesh has police, narcotics officers, intelligence agencies and criminal courts. Ishraque apparently concluded that the missing ingredient in this elaborate enforcement machinery was Ishraque himself.

His supporters had a point about one thing. Drugs are a genuine menace. Residents frustrated by trafficking and police inaction understandably welcomed someone prepared to confront it.

But there is a distinction between fighting organised narcotics networks and chasing their most expendable participants through railway-side settlements.

The drug lords were conspicuously absent.

No major trafficking network was exposed. No financier was identified. No politically protected narcotics syndicate was dismantled.

Instead, the public received six detainees and a viral video.

The operation also raised an obvious question: why was a state minister personally conducting what resembled a police raid?

Ishraque insisted that his pistol was licensed and carried for self-defence. But a firearms licence does not confer powers of arrest. Nor does political popularity.

The police have opened an investigation into the incident. Ishraque, meanwhile, promised to return with bamboo sticks.

One might have assumed that replacing a pistol with bamboo would resolve the problem. It does not. The objection was never merely to the weapon. It was to a public official taking law enforcement into his own hands.

He also accused critical newspapers of behaving like wild animals and suggested that some might have been supplying drugs in the area.

This was a particularly imaginative response to scrutiny. Rather than answer questions about his conduct, he raised questions about the narcotics distribution activities of journalists. 

Behind the comedy lies a familiar political temptation.

The government may have succeeded in removing an embarrassing minister. Whether it has addressed the political culture that produced the embarrassment is another question.

In a Guy Ritchie film, the characters usually discover that their elaborate schemes have delivered them precisely where they started, only poorer, bruised and considerably more ridiculous.

Ishraque began Saturday as a minister determined to eradicate drugs. By Monday morning, he was a departing minister determined to eradicate drugs.

In between came a pistol, bamboo sticks, six suspects, furious journalists, a confused state broadcaster and a resignation that existed in two contradictory states.

The drug lords, meanwhile, have every reason to remain unimpressed.

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Faisal Mahmud is the Managing Editor of Daily Waadaa