Silver lining in the dark clouds

WE can perhaps now express our optimism with some delight about a positive outcome of the exercise that the advisers had been untiringly carrying out to see a peaceful denouement to the current political situation.

We commend them for their efforts. The initiative they have taken has been made possible only by the space accorded to them, which the Chief Adviser and the President was so far reluctant to give. We hope the President realises the ability of his cabinet colleagues given freedom and trust. The immediate good result of the advisers' parleys with the two major alliances with the package proposal is the withdrawal of countrywide siege by the AL; we hope the Bangladeshis have seen the last of the siege programmes.

Early indications are that the BNP is quite amenable to the package prescription while the AL is observing as to how far and how quickly the actions contained in the package solutions are put into effect. But so far as we can say, the advisers' options envisaged in the package for resolving the prolonged and damaging political crisis have all but addressed most of the concerns of the AL. Therefore, the focus being on the two important points of the voters list and reliable officials being put at the grassroots levels of the administration, we see no reason why the new formula shall not receive the unequivocal endorsement of the two alliances.

And since the clouds of uncertainty is giving way to optimism it is now for the EC to go the whole hog in ensuring a free and fair election. We are happy to see the positive and quick reaction of the acting CEC Justice Mahfuzur Rahman in seeking ways to remove the mistakes in the voter list, quite unlike his predecessor who was not even willing to accept that there were flaws, which needed to be addressed.

We appreciate that making the voter list as near perfect as possible will be a formidable undertaking. But there are ways out that the EC might consider. For one thing there are non-governmental organisations in Bangladesh with grassroots level linkages that can be utilised to remove most of the anomalies.

As for the political parties they must ensure that the silver lining becomes permanent by shunning the path of confrontation and concentrating on the forthcoming elections.