Editorial
Hartals become increasingly menacing
What have we gained from it all?
In the opposition's last 36-hour hartal, three people were killed, scores injured, a train derailed and vehicles torched. Cocktail explosions, vandalism, arson, picketing and the all-encompassing 'sabotage' occurred across the country. As the shutdowns get increasingly violent, vehicles of the press and media, and even ambulances -- all of which are supposed to be out of the purview of hartals -- were attacked.
Hartals marked by sporadic violence were the norm. That spread to violence the night before, then the evening before, and now it can take place any time of any day, anywhere. Clashes between the police, opposition and ruling party activists around the country have become the not-so breaking news on the television ticker. But what have we, the people, gained from all this? Perhaps worth noting even more is what the parties involved have gained. The opposition activists jailed, demanding whose release the hartals were called, are yet to be set free. The caretaker government issue, on which the opposition is basing its overall movement, is yet to be resolved. While civil society, business organisations and the people in general have been looking to both the government and opposition for dialogue to resolve national issues, the heads of the ruling and opposition parties continue to blame each other for destroying the country and putting the lives of the people in peril.
Today is the fifteenth day of shutdown called by the BNP-Jamaat alliance since January 31, this time being in greater Dhaka. Other than death, injury and damage to public and private property, huge losses to the national economy, and increasingly confrontational politics characterised by rising intolerance and violence, nothing has changed. We have reached a political impasse where things have gone nowhere except from bad to worse. It is past high time that the leaders of our nation realise that nothing can come from confrontation. In order to decide the fate of the nation, they must come off the streets and in to parliament -- the correct place for political dialogue, to which the people have elected them.
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