Editorial
How long will AL allow BCL to destroy its image?
It is past the time for the government to act
Internecine conflicts between different factions of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student front of the ruling Awami League (AL), have again erupted with fresh vengeance. As usual it was all about rivalries among the leaders of the same unit or committee over establishing supremacy at the Dhaka University (DU) and the Barisal Polytechnic Institute (BPI). Though the clashes among the rival BCL leaderships in the DU took place at dead of night with exchange of gunshots, ransacking of rooms in a student hostel, at BPI it was a blood-curdling spectacle of lethal weapon-brandishing students at each other's throat.
Such relentlessly occurring turf wars within the same group of students leave one wondering if elements in the ruling party have let them loose or that it has no power at all to control them. True, the prime minister herself and the different leaders of the AL did exhort as well as warn them on more than one occasion to behave. Far from paying any heed to these counsels and sermons from the top party leadership, the members of the student organisation in question have only increased the intensity and expanded the extent of their suicidal and party-image destroying activities.
It is well past time for the party leadership to take the issue of these violent and bloody encounters within the ranks of its own students' front with a no-nonsense approach. How would they explain their failure to put their own house in order even after 14 months that they have assumed power? And during all these months it is this same students' body that has been involved in one type of mischief or another. The intra-party rivalry appears to have spilled over on a wider canvas.
In the circumstances, the leadership, rather than lecturing the BCL on the importance of good behaviour and the lofty ideals of the party, should take punitive actions against the recalcitrant elements. Why is the ruling party not being able to officially disassociate itself from the BCL in a wholesale manner?
In this column we have told for the umpteenth time to put a brake on the activities of BCL. Now the moment of truth has arrived. The ruling party should either put a leash on its students wing or be prepared to face its own ruination.
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