Imagine two images from the same week in the life of a nation. The first: The warm, televised glow of a meeting room at the State Guest House Jamuna. Officials are gathered, reviewing reports. The language is cool, procedural. The Chief Adviser states that “law and order must be maintained at any cost.” It is a statement of principle, a directive issued into the bureaucratic ether.
The second image: The stark flash of camera bulbs at an unseen location. No minutes are published here, but the outcomes are concrete. A deal is struck with the International Monetary Fund, locking in a multi-billion dollar reform program. Negotiations are finalized for advanced fighter jets from a European consortium. The interim government facilitates an agreement with the administration of Kosovo, a nation Bangladesh does not formally recognize, on Rohingya repatriation. The language here is not of monitoring, but of securing. Not of directing, but of deciding.
Which image captures the true actor? The observer in the dim room, or the signatory in the international spotlight? The public is shown one script; the world of diplomacy and high-stakes strategy is shown another. This dissonance is not a flaw in the narrative. It is the narrative.
At home, the interim government has mastered a specific grammar. Its sentences are built with passive verbs and abstract nouns. It is a language of process, designed to describe activity without conveying agency.
When the revered Bauls, mystic minstrels who are UNESCO-recognized cultural treasures, are attacked, the response follows a precise syntax. Authorities “condemn the incident,” a “committee is formed,” and “the law is urged to take its own course.” The violence against these singers is visceral — a clash of fists, the tearing of instruments, a silence where there should be song. Yet, the official response is antiseptic, converting raw conflict into a matter for file notes.
This pattern repeats like a ritual. After the destruction of shrines or acts of sectarian vandalism, the public hears a familiar refrain: “Investigations are ongoing,” “the situation is under control,” “we have directed the concerned authorities”.
The texture of this language is smooth, cool, and impenetrable. It is the opposite of sensory; it is meant to buffer, to distance, to absorb shock without initiating a new action.
It is the script of a stage manager, not the protagonist. The government’s role, in this domestic theater, is to ensure the scenery of “stability” remains intact.
It narrates the action — “police are performing their duties” — but rarely writes a new, risky plotline that would upset the fragile balance of the stage. Its power lies in the voiceover, not in the fight choreography. The goal is to maintain the set, the illusion of a predictable world, until the main electoral show begins.
Then, the scene changes. The domestic teleprompter switches off, and a different script is pulled from the podium. Here, the language is active, precise, and binding. The imagery is not of meeting rooms but of engineering, finance, and geopolitics.
Consider the hard, tangible objects: The purchase of long-haul aircraft for the national carrier, a decision committing state finances for decades. The negotiation for advanced Typhoon fighter jets, a transaction that reshapes the nation’s defense posture and alliances .
These are not subjects for “review.” They are signatures on contracts that weld the future into a particular shape. This is the language of the sovereign executive, spoken with the confidence of one building a legacy. It speaks of “national interest,” “strategic autonomy,” and “ironclad commitments.”
This is the world outside the dome. The Truman Show analogy is apt. For the audience inside — the domestic public — the sun rises on a curated schedule, the streets are swept clean of major plot twists, and the weather report is always one of procedural calm.
But outside the soundstage, the directors are engaged in a different project. They are negotiating with other studios (foreign powers), mortgaging the set for new equipment (IMF deals), and secretly building new, larger sets (defense architectures) for seasons far beyond the current broadcast.
The frictions of this real-world building occasionally leak in — the reported refusal of the military to participate in an Arakan corridor plan, a crack in the studio wall reminding us the set is not the world.
This duality is not incompetence; it is a coldly logical statecraft for a provisional regime. Its calculus is one of capital, traded in different currencies on separate fields.
Domestically, an unelected government’s primary currency is perceived neutrality and control. Taking bold, proactive stands on the thorny, ideological battles that fuel attacks on Bauls or shrines would spend that currency in a devastating gamble.
It would force the government out of its role as the neutral umpire and into the fray as a partisan player. Reactive, process-oriented language preserves its capital. It is a strategy of risk mitigation, of managing the audience’s perception while avoiding the costly drama on stage.
Internationally, the currency is credibility as a decisive partner. Here, ambiguity is weakness and process is delay. The IMF, defense contractors, and foreign governments require a counterpart that can deliver, a signatory that will bind the state. Decisive action here builds a different kind of legacy — one of facts, assets, and treaty obligations.
We, the public, are not just a passive audience. We are the critics. Our task in this interim period is to watch both feeds — the domestic broadcast and the international wire services. We must hold the two scripts up to the light, see where the paper is thin and the contradictions show through.
Do not just listen to the calming narration about law and order. Listen for the disconnect — the gap between that narration and the sound of new foundations being poured in the form of debt agreements and arms contracts.
The true plot of this chapter in our national story is being written not in the minutes of review meetings, but in the engine specs of fighter jets, the conditionalities of loan documents, and the quiet, strategic alignments that may outlast any single administration.
The imperative is not to accuse, but first, to truly see. To recognize the double script for what it is: A sophisticated, high-stakes production. Only then can we begin to ask the critical question: What kind of long-term drama is being authored for us, and who, in the end, will get to write the next act?
Zakir Kibria is a Bangladeshi writer, policy analyst and entrepreneur based in Kathmandu, Nepal. His email address is [email protected].
