Editorial
Hartal disguised as blockade
Opposition is punishing the people
The BNP-led 18-party opposition alliance's eight-hour road blockade gets underway today. Effectively, all the accesses to Dhaka city will be blocked leaving the whole country disconnected from the capital. Citizens have been advised, without giving them any freedom of choice whatsoever, that they keep vehicles off the road, not even ride rickshaws during the siege hours.
This is pure and simple hartal disguised under the label of road blockade. It's not only tantamount to an act of deceit played on the public, but also subjecting them to all the crippling effects of a hartal.
A shutdown is the most obvious impact of the programme, but the other graver issues relate to possible confrontation at two levels: one, between the law enforcement people and the opposition activists with the Jamaat-Shibir already leaving a trail of damages on property and injuries on policemen earlier on. And two, which is equally, if not more trouble-prone concerns itself with the portents of clashes between the opposition activists and the ruling party elements.
The opposition insists on their democratic right to demonstration and protest which we are fully supportive of. But how can a blockade programme which means use of force can either be democratic or peaceful as a means of protest? Given the whole range of dangers looming large over the 8-hour shutdown coupled with threats and counter threats being traded by both sides, a foreboding sense of anarchy and violence pervades the national psyche.
We are not questioning the rationale of opposition's agitation on the demand for caretaker government. But what we find unacceptable is the methods they are adopting to have their demand met. Why make the people suffer and punish them through taking a line of action that is easily launched by some expedient announcements instead of applying due diligence to settle for peaceable alternative path?
Meanwhile, as we urge both the ruling and opposition parties to exercise maximum constraint, we also call upon the opposition BNP to join the approaching winter session of the parliament and come to grips with the issue of interim caretaker arrangement for the forthcoming election.
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