It has come to our notice that time and again, either settled issues or even would normally be regarded as non-issues are being stoked incessantly to manufacture a series of controversies. Once you pick up the patterns running through them, it is fairly easy to see that in the majority of these occasions, the aim ultimately is to try and embarrass the interim government or the Council of Advisers, on which the executive authority of the Cabinet under an elected government is currently resting.

This week we witnessed two of those, although in different spheres. The first, more important one, was on the issue of ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed's resignation letter, or rather the non-existence of any such document. Readers will recall we first heard the idea of Sheikh Hasina not having signed or submitted a resignation letter around five or six days after she was forced to leave the country, in the face of a sea of humanity descending upon Ganobhaban, where they were soon to overrun it.

This was eminently believable, considering the absolutely dramatic turn of events we had witnessed on August 5, which no-one had expected. What sounded far less convincing were subsequent attempts to assert that she was thus still the country's prime minister. No one bought into that, and you could understand why.

Why then, it would be revived nearly two months later by one of the country's most experienced editors, during an interview for a book project, that he would then report right away, is beyond me. But nowhere else in world history will you find so much interest in the existence or otherwise of the formal resignation letter of a leader after he or she has literally fled the country.

Although President Shahabuddin has been on the receiving end of all the flak flowing from the incident, it was fairly clear that it had only come up as a result of the line of questioning. The scorching reaction of some advisers and the student coordinators, made it clear that they believe his time is up. Barring an intervention by General Waker-uz-Zaman, who was out of the country while all this was happening, it is difficult to see the president holding on to his post much longer now. There is a strand within the movement that would prefer to scrap the present constitution altogether. Sending its highest post-holder packing, with the speaker and deputy speaker posts lying vacant, can be a fairly big step towards realising that ambition.