A Photo -op fraught

A photo-op fraught with misgivings

Autocratic regimes can ensure stability through confiscating people’s rights and spreading fear. However, peace and stability gained through oppression is always fragile and short-lived. If nothing else, one can hope that our chief adviser has realised this by sharing a stage with the likes of Musharraf and Karzai,
writes Shameran Abed

THEY say a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture that was splashed on the front pages of almost every major newspaper in this country last weekend, of our chief adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, posing with Pakistan president Parvez Musharraf and Afghan president Hamid Karzai in Davos, may be worth a few more. That the three leaders and the Iraqi deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, who somehow managed to escape the photo-op, were placed in the same panel by the organisers of the World Economic Forum tells its own story. But the picture that emerged from the panel, of the three leaders holding hands and smiling for the cameras, showed enough for even the staunchest supporters of this present undemocratic dispensation to feel a little queasy........................................