The BNP is using the government shut down of the daily newspaper Amar Desh to good affect. Using a calculated show of protest against recent government actions, the BNP delegation joined a budgeting session only to walk out to signal disfavor of the government’s actions against the newspaper.
Amar Desh often joins with the BNP opposition to debate and parry Awami League policies; it is no wonder then that the opposition would take a strong line against the encroachment of government authority on favorable media outlets. Its claim on disfavor is stronger yet since the government shutdown is a threat to the vibrancy, and even the legitimacy of independent private media in the country, as a whole.
Democracy and its particular political economy functions well when citizens are able to obtain information that are relevant to their interests. Non-partisan information might simply be irrelevant to many social interests, for instance, if there does not exist a center upon which an individual might place bets, political or otherwise. Indeed, in many European countries, individually aggregated partisan social interests are still served by partisan newspapers. It is entirely feasible, if not just simply the case, that partisan media might serve that particular purpose in Bangladesh. To shut down such a voice, whatever its political stance, can then harm the foundations of Bangladeshi democracy. If this can turn the fortunes of media in the right to utter entangling and mortified misery, then why not a dissenting left or a privately run centrist voice?
Furthermore the government arrested the Acting Editor Mahmudur Rahman on a number of charges which included resisting arrest and assault on police officers. He had been previously charged with fraudulently using the name of the outgoing publisher Hasmat Ali. The BNP and its allied parties claims that the government shut down the newspaper in order to drive out a critiquing voice. The government’s counterclaim is that the government made no such move; rather the Dhaka Deputy Commissioner moved against the current leadership for the newspaper, following allegations of fraud from Hasmat Ali. The government might not be directly responsible for shuttering the newspaper. Nevertheless the protest might well remain valid.
The argument for protest is strong. The sitting government must recede from the extent possible from determining whose respectful voice needs censoring. The argument for broad and deep government boycott on the other hand is a different matter. The BNP can use its claims against government intervention when the argument against rigid intervention is strong. The justification falls apart when the issue at hand is a public welfare increasing policy move.
