Editorial
Shun hartal, save economy
Stop punishing the people
The entire nation was held hostage by the three days' continuous hartal enforced by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its alliance partners that cost the nation immeasurably in terms of loss of life, damage to property and loss to trade and commerce.
Some five persons died and 100 received injuries in hartal-related violence in the last three days. Simultaneously, some 14 buses, private cars and 50 motorcycles were also burnt in three days' hartal.
We will have to count more dead bodies, burnt vehicles and damage to properties, if the opposition make good on its threat to call hartals again.
Though we have no correct estimate on the hartal-related loss to the economy, taking the impacts on domestic trade and manufacture as well as external trade, especially export, into account, it can be safely said that the cumulative loss figure would come to the tune of billions of taka in a single day.
Economy apart, we have no yardstick to measure the sufferings the common people have to go through in consequence of a hartal.
Reiterating our consistent stand against hartal as a political weapon of protest, we share the business community's concern and echo their call to the opposition to shun hartal to realise their demand to get Ilias Ali and his driver back.
We hope the opposition would rather help the law and order agencies, or the government for that matter, to find out their leader.
The government cannot also shrug off its responsibility in taking the opposition into confidence to overcome the crisis.
One needs also to go to the root of the prevailing political culture of mutual distrust and confrontation and be all out to redress it.
The government and the opposition must find ways to reach out to each other, take mutual confidence building measures to resolve their conflicts and spare the people and the economy of the baneful impact of hartal.
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