Looking back 2017 : Challenges galore for govt in New Year

The repatriation of the Rohingyas, general elections acceptable to all, stability in the overheated goods market, illicit capital flow and banking sector management remain major challenges for the government in the new year.
Besides, experts said, human rights violation, including enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killing, corruption, declining quality of education and spreading question leak in public exams, traffic congestion, poor private investment, sluggish implementation of the infrastructure projects, unemployment and widening disparity between the poor and rich are among lingering problems for the ruling alliance in its final year of the back-to-back five–year tenures.
They stressed the need for extra efforts from the government to solve the Rohingya crisis that posed multiple risks following the influx of over 6.5 lakh the ethnic minority people into Cox’s Bazar fleeing ethnic cleansing in Buddhist majority Myanmar beginning from August 2017 in addition to another 4 lakh documented and undocumented Rohingyas entering at times since 1978. 
The Rohingya issue is a big crisis not only for the government but also the most pressing humanitarian crisis for the international community in modern time, said Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit executive director CR Abrar. 
‘Managing so many forcibly displaced Rohingyas and their repatriation to Myanmar require extra efforts,’ said Abrar, also Dhaka University international relations professor.
He, however, criticised the government for signing an instrument bilaterally with Myanmar for the repatriation of Rohingyas instead of a multilateral agreement. He described it as a shift from initial policy of the government.
Foreign minister AH Mahmood Ali, who signed the deal with Myanmar on November 23, however, expressed his satisfaction over the bilateral arrangement.
He said that both sides agreed to seek assistance from UN refugee agency UNHCR in the repatriation process.
On December 28, state minister for foreign affairs Md Shahriar Alam said that they were expecting to hold first meeting of the joint working group, formed in line with the instrument, by January 15 to start the repatriation process.
Cautiousness in addition to extra effort is also required from the government to create an atmosphere conducive to the next general election, scheduled to be held within 90 days before January 28, 2019, said experts.
The present government has been facing severe criticism in home and abroad for the January 5, 2014 general election, marred by absence of the most voters from the polling stations and boycotted by all opposition parties.
The opposition parties have been demanding general elections under a non-party neutral government since 2011, when the government amended the constitution scrapping the provisions of polls-time non-party government, which were incorporated into the constitution following mass movements led by the Awami League, now the ruling party.
Dhaka University political science professor Gobinda Chakraborty said that a participatory general election amid confusion among voters was now a big challenge for the government.
Nobody wants any repetition of the January 2014 election that deprives majority voters of their voting rights, he said.
Recent city polls in Rangpur and Comilla were major assignments for the new election commissioners appointed in February, said Election Commission secretary Helaluddin Ahmed.
Many quarters appreciated the role the commission played in the polls, he said, expressing hope that the commission would be able to regain voters’ confidence in the elections to local government bodies and eventually the next general election.
The opposition parties and different quarters, however, continued to demand that the ruling and the opposition parties must reach a consensus about the polls-time government to ensure a free, fair and inclusive general election to establish democracy.
Experts said that there was no alternative to a consensus among the political parties to keep the country’s progress on the socio-economic front featured by average 6 per cent growth during the past decade, industrialisation and poverty alleviation, success in primary education and sanitation and reduction in child mortality.
They wanted that the government agencies would enhance monitoring for checking malpractices on financial arena, especially in the banking sector known as the main nerve of the economy.
Series of loan scams, growing bad loans and overwhelming presence of private banks following awarding banking licences to inexperienced and dishonest bankers on political consideration, however, posed serious risks to the economy, said former Bangladesh Bank governor Salehuddin Ahmed.
He noted that a sound banking system was a prerequisite for industrialisation, poverty alleviation, checking income disparity and stopping capital flight.
The country lost $75.15 billion due because of trade miss invoicing and other unrecorded outflows between 2005 and 2014, according to a report by the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity released in May.
Besides, deposits by Bangladeshi citizens in Swiss banks, according to reports by the Swiss National Bank published in June, increased 19 per cent to Tk 5,566 crore in 2016 from Tk 4,417 in 2015 in addition to smuggling of huge money to Malaysia and Singapore. 
Experts said that disciplining the financial sector became an overdue task for the government while stabilising the commodity market remained a major challenge for the government since the price hike of rice over 30 per cent put over 50 per cent of the country’s population living on less than $3 income in great distress to make up the increased food cost.
Consumers Association of Bangladesh general secretary Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan said that price hike was a very sensitive issue and revisited the country first time since the previous food price shock during the military-backed interim regime in 2007-2008. 
Bringing down the price of essentials within tolerable level is the first duty of the government in the new year, he said.
Finance minister AMA Muhith while focusing on challenges on the eve of the new year told New Age on Sunday that the government should take fresh measures to reduce rice price increased due to ‘greedy traders.’
To address challenges in the banking sector, he also said that measures would be taken by the next two months to check unholy takeover of private banks by a Chittagong-based trading group and to improve severe liquidity crisis in Farmers Bank, a new generation private bank failing to return money to depositors.
Last but not the least, according to experts, is addressing the enforced disappearance, number of which has grown gradually to 91 in 2016 from 2 in 2009.
According to the rights organisation Odhikar, 74 people went missing until October in 2017 with politicians, students and business people being the worst victims of enforced disappearance.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net