Editorial
Yet another day of hartal!
Find alternatives to it
The opposition BNP has called hartal for a third consecutive day today. One man died in Sylhet yesterday as people of Bishwanath upazila, the constituency of missing BNP leader M Ilias Ali, locked in violent clashes with police for several hours.
We are appalled by the sequence of events since Saturday. On that day there were violence and vandalism by hartal supporters to terrorise people to acquiesce in the hartal programme. But Sunday's hartal passed off without any major incident barring sporadic clashes and another death. Commenting on that day's hartal, we had voiced concern on hearing the news of extension of hartal that we may have been thrown into the vortex of a new cycle of violence. By yesterday's events, we have been proved right. What awaits us today is anybody's guess. We urge constraint on both the sides.
It is no news that the country's economy is already reeling from runaway inflation following the opening of some fuel-based rental power plants, declining remittance growth and deteriorating foreign exchange reserves. Exports have been declining due to downturn in Euro zone and the USA. Calling hartal at such a critical time comes as a serious blow to the export and import-oriented industries of the country. Besides exports and imports, foreign investors gradually lose their confidence in our market due to the worsening political situation. To recite the losses sustained through even a single day's hartal is to restate the obvious but we are fraught with more pressing circumstances than ever before to have any more hartal.
Therefore, we would urge the opposition to look for alternatives to hartal which they had already taken recourse to in the form of long marches and mass rallies with a significant degree of success. They drew huge public support for such programmes.
For the government's part it has to allow the opposition the space to perform its legitimate role so that it is not provoked into adopting confrontational posturing to the detriment of a democratic functioning of the state.
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