Hartal's success
Hartal is an undemocratic process of exercising the democratic rights of a political party. Perhaps, it can be justified if the reasons of calling a hartal are purely to protest the government's policies adversely affecting the common people, or the government's unwillingness to listen to the opposition. It can however never be justified if the reasons of calling a hartal include testing the power of the adversaries or to energize the party and its workers.
On June 27, 2010, Dr. Mosharraf Hossain told the press that he was glad the hartal was a success, and the reasons of calling such a hartal included the plan to energize the party and its workers. I appreciate his candid confession of this 'truth'. But I expected the pressmen present at the news conference to probe this a little more in detail, but obviously that did not happen.
This confession seems pretty casual but has deep implications.
In the western press, such a confession would have been a 'kiss of death'.
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