18-07-2018

EDITORIAL
WEDNESDAY,
JULY 18, 2018
4
Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam
Telephone: +8802-9104683-84, Fax: 9127103
e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Ensuring quality
and fair prices of
medicines
Ever since the introduction of a national drug
policy for Bangladesh in 1982, pharmaceutical
industries in this country have gone on growing
briskly. Bangladesh, today, is self sufficient in the
production of all types of essential drugs. Some of
these pharmaceutical industries have been like
flagship enterprises in this sector producing drugs of
high quality . These reputed pharmaceutical
companies have also succeeded in carving out an
export outlet for their products in USA, Europe and
Africa.
But these successes notwithstanding, there are also
reasons for concern. While some drug companies here
have set standards of the highest quality controls,
many others, however, are noted for their hazardous
performance. But now is the time when the local drug
industry appears to have replaced foreign ones
effectively, that these should completely allay fears of
sub-standard production of drugs. This is also all the
more important when Bangladeshi drug
manufacturers are starting to find an international
market for their products. Preserving market shares
internationally and to expand the same, drug makers in
Bangladesh need to absolutely ensure that they pay
total attention to ensure the impeccable standard of the
drugs produced by them.
The parliamentary standing committee on health
found in its probe sometime ago that some drug
companies were performing not up to the mark. It
suggested to the official regulator, the Directorate of
Drug Administration (DDA), to take action. But
according to the recent report in a national daily, it still
continues to be business as usual for the DDA. With its
rank and file soaked in corruption, the offending drug
companies are facing little difficulty in continuing with
their marketing of sub standard and date barred drugs.
The daily reported on how DDA officials get bribes
regularly from such companies for their not taking any
actions.
Human health and medical care are areas where
hardly any underperformance, lapses or harms caused
by low quality products, can be permitted or tolerated
because the same directly affect human lives or
physical well-being of humans. Realization of this
factor all the time should keep the regulators motivated
to do their job thoroughly and efficiently. But since this
has not been happening, it has become a matter of
very great importance from the standpoint of public
health that such unscrupulousness pervading the
ranks of the DDA should be promptly scrutinized and
severe actions taken against the corrupt ones.
Apart from the sub standard drugs of some duly
licensed and registered drug companies, there are also
underground activities of spurious producers.
Recently, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) found out
two such underground operators. It was revealed that
one of them was making antibiotic capsules by putting
wheat flour in them. The declared antibiotic was not
found in them. Thus, it takes no stretch of the
imagination to realize what grave threats to public
health are being created by these fake drug producers
whose products are being marketed among
unsuspecting people.
Therefore, not only the underperforming regular
companies should be monitored regularly and
scrupulously to ensure quality of their products , it is
more important to absolutely root out makers and
distributors of fake medicines.
The prices of many locally produced medicines--
including many in the essential category-are also a matter
of concern.These are fixed according to the will of the drug
companies and in most cases the companies are guided by
crass profiteering motive in doing this. The prices of these
drugs are sometimes artificially high and bear no
relationship to their lower production costs.
This practice is causing two adverse consequences.
On the one hand, it is defeating the egalitarian goal of
the national drug policy which is to provide essential
medicines to people at affordable or reasonable prices
and, on the other, harming the long term development
of the local medicine industry itself from the
availability of cheaper equivalents of these coming
through imports or smuggling.
Therefore, it is necessary for the government to
regulate or exercise its influence over the fixation of
medicine prices. The companies may be allowed to go
on setting drug prices but they should be clearly
warned and obliged to do so-- reasonably and ethically-
- consistent with actual production and other costs.
The respective department of the government should
have the powers to conduct proper investigations
regularly to confirm that the prices set by the
companies are reasonable. If not, then it should tell the
companies to revise prices downward to reflect their
rational prices. Perhaps, government should consider
suggesting the maximum retail price of drugs in some
cases and there should be also mechanisms to
persuade the companies to comply with such
suggestions.
Sri Lanka’s Chinese connection: beyond bribes and debts
Former Sri Lankan president
Mahinda Rajapaksa's ambition
was to build a port in his own
district of Hambantota. Although
feasibility studies showed the port
to be commercially unviable,
Beijing extended credit to build it.
When Rajapaksa's presidency was
challenged in late 2014, Beijing,
concerned that a new regime might
be an obstacle to its plans,
dispensed payments directly to
campaign aides and activities for
Rajapaksa, who had agreed to
China's terms. Although Rajapaksa
was voted out, in the face of
mounting debt, the new regime was
compelled to lease the port to a
Chinese government-owned
company for 99 years. This explains
how Sri Lanka's Hambantota port
came under Chinese control.
But it does not tell how Beijing
was able to foster a close
relationship with Colombo under
the nose of New Delhi, the
dominant regional power. Nor does
it explain why the new regime in
Colombo, which had begun by
wanting to pursue a balanced
approach, continued the tilt toward
Beijing. This became evident in late
2015 when Colombo agreed to buy
military transport airplanes from
China and even clearer in early
April 2016 when Sri Lankan Prime
Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe,
renewing the Chinese-funded
Colombo Port City project, declared
that the cooperation between China
and Sri Lanka would intensify and
go far beyond that.
During 2017, New Delhi
attempted to gain a foothold in
southern Sri Lanka by offering to
purchase 70% of Mattala
International Airport, dubbed "the
world's emptiest international
airport," on a 40-year lease. There
was no commercial benefit for
India. It was an offer similar to the
one that saw Hambantota port come
under Chinese management.
Colombo did not respond. Had
Colombo been serious about
balancing Beijing against New
Delhi, this could have been a
worthwhile opportunity. Nor did
Colombo respond to New Delhi's
overtures about operating a major
oil-storage facility and a liquefied
natural gas (LNG) plant in
Trincomalee in addition to
developing the Port of Trincomalee
as a key transit point.
In January 2015, there was
speculation about Rajapaksa's
demise resulting in a regime likely
to be friendlier toward New Delhi,
but not everyone agreed. Nitin Pai
of the Takshashila Institution, an
independent think-tank, argued
that in view of the geopolitical
underpinnings of the Beijing-
Colombo axis, it was unlikely that
Sri Lanka's relationship with China
would change merely because one
president was replaced by another.
Colombo is unlikely to give up on
the strategic gains made through
forging a close relationship with
China rooted in its policy born out
of historic antipathy to India, its
giant neighbor.
This antipathy can be traced to Sri
Lanka's first prime minister, D S
Senanayake, who feared that the
most likely threat to Sri Lanka's
independence would come from
ANA PARARAJASINGHAM
India. Senanayake associated this
fear of India with the presence of
Tamils in a region in Sri Lanka not
far from southern India, home to
more than 50 million Tamils at that
time.
During pre-independence
discussions with Lord Soulbury, the
head of the commission appointed
by the British to draft a constitution
for the island, Senanayake
expressed his fear about the Tamils
in Sri Lanka confederating with
India "as Ulster separated from the
Irish Republic to federate with
Britain."
According to Sri Lankan historian
K M de Silva, the defense
agreements signed in 1947 with
Whitehall in the wake of the
transfer of power from Britain were
part of Colombo's "process of
adjusting to the uncertainties of a
new pattern of international politics
in South Asia with India as an
independent state." And John
Gooneratne, a former Sri Lankan
diplomat, wrote in A Decade of
Confrontation: "There was always a
tension between Sri Lanka and
India as it usually exists where a
small state is juxtaposed next to a
very big state. And, in the postindependence
period, there was a
constant awareness of the presence
of a very big northern neighbor
projecting its power in the south."
Colombo has always countered its
giant neighbor's influence by
forging close relationships with
those opposed to New Delhi. During
the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Sri
Lanka supported Pakistan by
providing refueling facilities.
During the Cold War, Colombo
maintained either a strictly nonaligned
position or a pro-Western
policy in contrast to New Delhi,
which had a special relationship
with the Soviet Union.
By the early 1980s, Colombo's
suspicions seemed justified when
New Delhi armed and trained Tamil
rebels to exert pressure on Sri
Lanka, which was showing clear
signs of moving into the Western
camp.
These suspicions were only
reinforced when India intervened
directly in 1987 under the Indo-Sri
Lanka Accord to deny the US the
use of Trincomalee Harbor and
permission to set up a Voice of
America broadcasting facility in Sri
Lanka. In return, the Indian army
attempted to disarm the Tamil
rebels spearheaded by the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
LINDA S. HEARD
(LTTE), better known as the Tamil
Tigers. But this ended in disaster for
the Indian forces, which, unable to
disarm the LTTE, left the island
after suffering almost a thousand
casualties.
Indian National Security Adviser
M K Narayanan (right) and Foreign
Secretary Shivshankar Menon, left,
arrive at the New Delhi airport on
April 24, 2009.
After its costly intervention in the
late 1980s, New Delhi ceased to play
a direct role in Sri Lanka's armed
conflict. That was until 2008, when
New Delhi renewed its direct
intervention, this time to defeat the
Tamil Tigers.
Piecing together two separate
narratives, one by Sam Rajappa, a
long-term journalist with The
Statesman, and the other by Lalith
Weeratunga, secretary to the Sri
Lankan president, Mahinda
Rajapaksa, it is possible to
understand how Colombo was able
to counter New Delhi's influence by
securing Chinese assistance
Piecing together two separate
narratives, one by Sam Rajappa, a
long-term journalist with The
Statesman, and the other by Lalith
Weeratunga, secretary to the Sri
Lankan president, Mahinda
Rajapaksa, it is possible to
understand how Colombo was able
to counter New Delhi's influence by
securing Chinese assistance. Both
accounts are highly credible,
providing in great detail the events
leading to New Delhi's direct
intervention.
According to Sam Rajappa, the
chain of events leading to New Delhi
providing military assistance to
Colombo began with a preliminary
meeting between Rajapaksa's
emissaries and a group of four
Tamil Nadu civil-society
representatives. This was followed
by several other meetings during
which both parties reached a
unanimous understanding that a
military victory for one side without
a political strategy to address the
grievances of the Tamil people was
unlikely to produce a lasting
solution.
Rajappa refers to two meetings
that Tamil Nadu civil-society
members had with Rajapaksa on
July 17, 2007, and on March 25,
2008, in Colombo and Rajapaksa
fully endorsing the view that the
solution to the conflict should
emerge from within Sri Lanka
refined through Indian opinion.
The dynamics changed when New
Delhi became aware of this
initiative and New Delhi intervened
by signaling to the Sri Lankan
government that it should go all out
to decimate the LTTE without
insisting on a political solution.
Rajappa attributes this decision by
New Delhi to Sonia Gandhi, who
wanted LTTE leader Velupillai
Pirapaharan and its intelligence
chief, Pottu Amman, dead and had
pledged all military support for Sri
Lanka to achieve this goal. The
national security adviser, M K
Narayanan, and the foreign
secretary, Shivshankar Menon, are
identified by Rajappa as responsible
for implementing this course of
action that served "Sonia Gandhi's
interest above national interest."
Lalith Weeratunge's account in
June corroborates Sam Rajappa's
account of July 2011. According to
Weeratunge, the initial contact on
behalf of the Indian government
was made sometime in 2008 by
India's high commissioner, Alok
Prasad.
At this meeting, Sri Lanka's
president was asked to nominate
three individuals who would then
meet three of their Indian
counterparts. Rajapaksa's nominees
were Basil Rajapaksa, senior adviser
to the president, Gotabaya
Rajapaksa, the defense secretary,
and himself, the secretary to the
president. New Delhi had
nominated M K Narayanan, the
national security adviser, Shankar
Menon, the foreign secretary, and
Vijay Singh, the defense secretary.
This was India's troika to engage
with Sri Lanka's troika to monitor
the war against the Tamil Tigers.
The teams from both countries were
made up of individuals who had the
ear of their leaders.
Having met for the first time at the
Taj Samudra hotel in Colombo, they
met several times thereafter.
Weeratunge makes special mention
of the camaraderie during these
meetings and how they continued
for a while after the defeat of the
Tamil Tigers. Having pointedly
referred to Narayanan's admiration
for Gothabaya Rajapaksa,
Weeratunge notes that as the war
progressed, Colombo found itself in
a commanding position vis-à-vis
New Delhi. Emboldened by this
shift in power, Rajapaksa promptly
dismissed Narayanan's request in
April 2009 to stop military activity
in the north of Sri Lanka to
accommodate state government
elections in Tamil Nadu to be held
in mid-May that year.
Having reached a situation in
which New Delhi was well
entrenched as a willing partner,
Colombo sought and obtained
Beijing's assistance. According to
Brahma Chellaney in an essay titled
"Behind the Sri Lankan Bloodbath,"
this assistance from China was
obtained by Sri Lanka "through
adroit but duplicitous diplomacy."
Colombo assured India it would
approach other arms suppliers only
if New Delhi couldn't provide a
particular weapon system it needed.
Yet it quietly began buying arms
from China without letting India
know.
Source : Asia times
Turkey evolves into a one-man show
In light of the Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan's executive
power grab albeit with the approval
of 52 per cent of the country's
population, can Turkey still lay claim to
being a democratic republic based on the
separation of powers?
Certainly its system of government
formerly admired by Western
democracies as a model to be emulated
by other predominantly Muslim states
has teetered away from democratic
values over the past six years, which is
one of the factors negatively impacting
Turkey's fragile economy.
The Turkish lira has slipped 17 per cent
since the beginning of this year due in
part to investor concerns that the central
bank has lost its independence to set
interest rates. Inflation has ballooned to
15 per cent. Borrowing is said to be
unsustainable."Turkey's economy is so
hot it may face a meltdown" reads a
recent headline in the New York Times,
seconded by the Washington Post that
predicts the nation is "headed for a big
crash".
On Friday, Fitch Ratings announced it
had reduced the country's sovereign debt
rating to BB from BB+ citing
deteriorating "economic policy
credibility and "heightened uncertainty"
caused by "initial policy actions following
elections in June". One of those troubling
actions was Erdogan's appointment of
his son-in-law Berat Albayrak as
Minister of Treasury and Finance, a
move that has not only been criticised as
nepotistic but also slashed a further three
In January 2015, there was speculation about Rajapaksa's
demise resulting in a regime likely to be friendlier toward
New Delhi, but not everyone agreed. Nitin Pai of the
Takshashila Institution, an independent think-tank, argued
that in view of the geopolitical underpinnings of the
Beijing-Colombo axis, it was unlikely that Sri Lanka's
relationship with China would change merely because one
president was replaced by another. Colombo is unlikely to
give up on the strategic gains made through forging a close
relationship with China rooted in its policy born out of
historic antipathy to India, its giant neighbor.
per cent from the currency's value.
Erdogan's 15-year-long leadership
style has always tilted towards the
authoritarian supported by his millions
of devoted followers but since
constitutional changes have came into
force his word is virtually law. Most
checks and balances faced by democratic
leaders have been erased.
The post of prime minister has been
abolished and the president's new
responsibilities via nine newly minted
offices encompass all institutions.
Ministries, judicial and prosecutorial
appointments, the military, intelligence
services, the vetting of journalists and the
state budget are all under the control of
one powerful individual. According to
Abdul Latif Sener, a former deputy
prime minister, "there is no
constitutional mechanism to change the
government".
Besides Turkey's economic woes,
personal freedoms have been
substantially diminished, not least the
freedom to protest and exercise free
speech. Since the attempted coup two
years ago over 160,000 people have been
imprisoned and purges are still ongoing,
the latest involving 18,000 state
employees, the majority members of the
police, the military and the teaching
profession accused of having links to
terrorist groups.
More than 1,000 companies have been
sequestered by the state. Some 320
Besides Turkey's economic woes, personal freedoms
have been substantially diminished, not least the
freedom to protest and exercise free speech. Since the
attempted coup two years ago over 160,000 people
have been imprisoned and purges are still ongoing, the
latest involving 18,000 state employees, the majority
members of the police, the military and the teaching
profession accused of having links to terrorist groups.
journalists have been arrested; 130
media outlets have been shut down.
Protests are dealt with severely.
"Turkey's system of government was
admired in the West as a model to be
emulated, and its departure from
democratic values has strained ties with
the EU"
On July 6, four university graduates
were arrested in Ankara accused of
defaming the president. They were
accused of defaming the president over a
banner emblazoned with cartoons with
the words "The World of Tayyip".
Turkey's departure from democratic
values has strained its relationship with
the EU, currently considered to be a
marriage of convenience based on
mutual interests. Last year Erdogan
angrily told the EU to "stop leading us by
the nose". "If you want to take Turkey
into the European Union just tell us, do
it. When you do not want it, tell us," he
said.
An EU report published in April
appeared to scupper Turkey's accession
chances. It slammed mass arrests,
corruption, a lack of freedom of
expression and human rights abuses.
Turkey is taking "huge strides away"
from the European Union said EU
commissioner Johannes Hahn at the
time.
In June, the EU indicated Ankara's
hopes were deadlocked while asserting
Turkey was one of the bloc's important
partners due to its role in preventing
migrants from crossing the
Mediterranean. In that respect Turkey
holds Europe over a barrel threatening to
open the gates if the EU does not
institute visa-free travel for Turks.
Nevertheless, the country's Foreign
Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirms
that Turkey's strategic goal is to progress
to EU membership although in truth as
one poster on social media put it,
Erdogan "has as much chance of
winning the lottery".
Source: Gulf news