Hasina's son defends 'controversial appointments'.........

Sajeeb Wajed, son of prime minister Sheikh Hasina, has said that comparison between him and Tarique Rahman, son of former PM Khaleda Zia, was unfair as "I've a masters degree in Public Administration from Harvard University".

Sajeeb made the comment in an apparent effort to avoid a direct response to a question posed us about whether he would declare unequivocally that unlike Tarique, and Khaleda's younger son Coco, he would not become involved in any business deal during the tenure of the current Awami League-led government.

His comment came during the question-answer session at a seminar on "The Bangladesh elections and beyond: Democracy, Security and Development", jointly organised by the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and US Bangladesh Business Advisory Council in Washington on Wednesday.

He was one of the four panellists at the seminar, which provided an opportunity for the first time for many in the audience to hear directly from the prime minister's son, since the Awami League-led alliance won a landslide victory in last month's election.

The organisers described him as "an advisor to Her Excellency Sheikh Hasina".

Sajeeb's presence obviously generated a lot of interest among the audience, who were eager to learn more about the election and the country's current and future course.

Not surprisingly, most of the questions were directed to him and that prompted the moderator Walter Anderson, director of the South Asia Programme at SAIS, to intervene repeatedly in an effort to give the other three panellists a chance to answer some questions.

The other three were Joshua White, a PhD student at SAIS, Imtiaz Habib, a board member of USBAC, and Peter Manikas, Asia Director of the National Democratic Institute. White and Manikas recently visited Bangladesh as election observers.

Smart and articulate, Sajeeb made a generally good impression at the start, but his answers to some of the questions appeared to disappoint many in the audience, especially when he was trying to defend the controversial appointment of Toufiqe-e-Elahi Chowdhury as an adviser to the prime minister.

The PM's son was asked directly: "Why do you think the prime minister appointed such controversial figures as Toufique-e-Elahi, who was in jail recently on corruption charges, as advisers while there's no dearth of clean and respectable people in Bangladesh?"

Sajeeb said he didn't see anything wrong in such appointments. "Some people may say that Toufique-e-Elahi is controversial but there are others who say he is not".

About his recent incarceration on corruption charges, Sajeeb said the caretaker government imprisoned many innocent people without any credible evidence and "my mother was one of them".

The seminar was attended by Bangladeshi-Americans, diplomats, academics and others interested in Bangladesh.

Ambassador Humayun Kabir made a brief introductory statement at the seminar about the recent election and future prospects of Bangladesh.