If you want to understand how the people feel about hartal, go to the streets and ask them not your political activists or hired goons, but the ordinary hard-working men in the street. You will get a small taste of the despair and contempt we feel for your actions. These are not the actions of a credible, responsible opposition, but those of a malevolent and infantile party bent on destroying everything it cannot control.

Ahead of a general election, the electorate are watching. Unless you reform your policies, revise your tactics and expel the criminals from your party hierarchy, they will consign you to the scrap heap of politics once again. Why should we vote for MPs that fail to attend parliament I am certain they have not once failed to collect their fat paycheques?

My father was a supporter of the Awami League and a Mukti Bahini organiser during the War of Liberation. My uncle is still an activist in Kishoreganj. I will now convince him that his patriotic duty is to put aside any party that wants to destroy Bangladesh.

For the sake of the people and the nation, stop hartal .