Editorial
An avoidable hartal
Why risk erosion of public sympathy?
For quite sometime prior to the Eid-ul-Azha holidays, the opposition had been carrying out programmes of protest and agitation against the ruling coalition which included street marches, public meetings and intermittent but spaced out hartals. These protests by the opposition are aimed at ruling coalition's, what it calls, anti-people and anti-democratic measures. In the recent times, however, the agitation is focused primarily on the questionable functioning of the Election Commission. Of late, in particular, credibility of the EC as an independent organ of our Constitution has been in question not just by the opposition but also by public at large. Protest marches and rallies are a right of any opposition in a functioning democracy. The current programme of agitation announced by the opposition is, therefore, within its rights minus, in our opinion, the hartal part. It is our conviction that the call for standstill has certainly outlived its purpose as an instrument of agitation in an economy-oriented world of today. More so, when the points that the opposition is trying to get across had already sunk in the public mind. On an extremely relevant note, the hartal call is twice more undesirable since this could mean yet another closure round for all day-to-day public activities just when we were trying to shake off indolence of a 5-day festival-related vacation. We therefore feel strongly that the hartal call for January 22 should be seriously reconsidered by the opposition in an overture that must be hugely greeted by people. On a slightly different note, opposition think-tanks should realise that this legacy of hartals could very well be used against it if and when the party takes the reins of administration. It is also important to note that no other country of the world has this form of political protest in the manner and style as it exists here in Bangladesh creating so much of disruption in public life.
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