The Awami League government has now shut down another television station in the span of less than six months. This is the second such censorious clamp-down since the Awami League returned to power in December 2008. This is a troubling move, for the official excuse for the revocation of the license to broadcast seems like a fairly slight rule on which to trade in that kind of Machiavellian gambit.
As The Daily Star reports, “[Minister of Post and Telecommunication Rajiuddin Ahmed] Raju said television channels were not allowed to use ‘transferable’ equipment and licence but Channel 1 auctioned its machineries, which is a complete breach of law.”
“The channel is using equipment owned by other companies. ‘But the law says the licensee must hold the entitlement of their equipment,’ Raju said.”
Though the move is a rational one if the goal is to disable all other competing media outlets and public voices, the means to reach that goal seems thoroughly self-defeating. Each instance of government led opposition media censorship triggers policy reprisals from the opposition and from international organizations that are interested in the dialectical of reason and outrage that so often fuels politics in Bangladesh.
The government is acting in a rapacious manner, capricious in its exercise of power. Given that the BNP has promised a wave of public protests and at least some of those mass demonstrations are likely to resonate with partisans if the government intervenes, it’s hardly surprising that the AL has pulled a media outlet that sympathizes with the BNP. But this is not the way to go. The politics of any state and people is a multi-dimensional affair; policy moves do not have the immediate and obvious consequences that are dreamed up in scenario planning sessions. The way to deal with the BNP is to work on all levels of politics and policy in a way that the median Bangladeshi voter has some reason to return the AL to power for a consecutive term.
Consider that in the history of the country no one party has been peacefully re-elected to serve out a second term. Were the AL able to pull off that feat, it will have achieved a laudable end through laudable means.
