The nation will exercise its right of franchise at the forthcoming elections. It is the hope of the people of Bangladesh that the political parties and alliances participating in the elections will develop the programmes which they mean to implement if and when they go to power. They do not expect any mouthing of the old platitudes, those which spoke of plans without giving the details necessary for the plans to be convincing. In these modern times, it is not enough to say, on the part of the politicians, that they will promote and strengthen democracy. They need to go into deeper explanations through suggesting what precisely they mean to do and in which areas in a furtherance of their objectives. Likewise, there are the many socio-economic issues which the parties must focus on as they go into the campaign.

Those issues affect every citizen, particularly the young. We have issues like unemployment which call for effective and strategic solutions. It will not be enough for our political leaders to tell us that they will provide employment to the young. What today's extremely intelligent generation wishes to know is the nature of the details that will substantiate the promises of employment? At the same time, there are such crucial areas as health. To what extent are the parties ready to make provisions for health services in the rural interior and how prepared are they to guarantee that doctors, nurses and other medical personnel will serve in the regions they are sent to rather than exercising their influence not to join the places of their posting or come back soon after they have joined? Such an issue of course calls for decentralization of the administration in nearly every area of government. The political parties and alliances will need to convince the electorate that they have concrete plans in hand to add substance to their post-election goals.

Education has not quite been in good form. Firstly, despite the ever larger numbers of young people leaving schools and colleges with remarkable scores, we can ask if they are properly being educated in the existing system. Secondly, a grasp of such subjects as literature and history appears to have gone missing in the lives of the young. Are our parties ready and equipped to deal with such issues?

The people of Bangladesh would certainly not like to be disappointed.

By Editor-in-Chief -Enayetullah Khan