Can it get any worse before it gets better?

The way the nation is burning, we may call it forced self-immolation, a new coinage minted in devil's workshop, Bangladesh style. What result such innocent snuffed out lives will bring to the nation except more misery and add to the ranks of nameless martyrs. And what are they being typically told by the programme launchers? “Well, you have to bear up with some discomfort (read groaning pain in third degree burn, even death) for a greater gain” -- unabashedly meaning helping their tormentors to power.

Petrol bomb victim, two and a half-year-old Safir was inconsolably insistent on sitting on his mother's lap and similarly afflicted teenager Anik, missing out on a public examination, was doubly agonising shrouded in bandage.

The list is endless, so I have to crave the sufferers' indulgence for unintended omissions, plentiful as they are. Our heart goes out in sympathy for all the victims, knowing full well public memory is short and the leaders' even shorter!

But this resonates at once with all of us: The parents of Safir and Anik vented their feelings to the journalists: “For God's sake, stop all these,” imploring the leaders, as though they were speaking out the conscience of the nation.

In politics, a feeler or a signal might be given out by the government to political opponent either as a matter of tactic or with the purpose of genuinely testing waters with her. A situation had been created by the government restricting Khaleda Zia's movement to her office for a couple of weeks. The government sooner or later needed to come to grips with it. Accordingly, police presence was withdrawn and the padlock removed from her gate.

Clearly some thought went into the relaxation on her movement (still an open question) as it coincided with the birth anniversary of late president and BNP founder Ziaur Rahman. One would have expected that she would read in the government's move a positive sign which, in part, she did when thanking the government for “its good sense.” And, for moments, she appeared to suggest that she was testing the government's intent on how far it would free her up. Rather than using it as a respite and belying public expectations she declared that blockade would continue till “people's right to vote was restored.” A dangerously open-ended agenda for the current outlook on politics. She doubled the hostile programme with a 48-hour hartal ending today with more bloodletting, burning and maiming as nobody's business.

Her decision unfortunately overruled the reported counsel of some senior members of BNP standing committee to the contrary. They pleaded for less exacting alternatives adding that continuation of oborodh was unrealistic and that it risked unpopularity for the party.

Actually, the party leadership suspected that the government might have been 'laying a trap' to chaperon her to her residence. Such is the level of trust pinned on the government purely on the basis of assumption. What difference does it make whether she stays in her office or residence unless she is restored status quo ante?

For one thing, she didn't meet the general expectations which would win her some brownie points with the people. For the second, she refused to give the barely ajar window of opportunity a chance to open fully ending the bizarre atmosphere of non-communication between the two major political parties.

To most people's thinking, this is the BNP's second blunder after its boycott of the January 5, 2014 election. Let not these be weighed on the same scale but the same mental process seems to have been at work in both cases.

On the basic issues of preventing Khaleda Zia from holding public rallies and keeping her confined for two weeks, government leaders have had informally two explanations: First, they purportedly received intelligence reports suggesting that Khaleda would have converted her rally into a massive siege programme; and secondly, keeping her confined that long was prompted by suspicion that from Biswa Ijtema, a stream of people might have pushed towards where the BNP chairperson was. These are hypotheses remaining untested but clearly the government faces a dilemma here. How long can it deny the BNP a democratic space to function as an opposing political party?

Interestingly, State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal explained away the withdrawal of police from in front of Khaleda Zia's Gulshan office by way of additional reinforcements placed on anti-blockade duty to save public life and property.

We think the government's counter-measures like offering 'bounty' to those providing information about bomb-making and petrol bomb throwers and its contemplating shoot-at-sight orders bear the possibilities of abuse. These should be rethought in view of the tendency in a divisive political society to be settling old scores with each other. In particular, the shoot-at-sight doesn't sit in with a democratic paradigm.

Meanwhile, provocative and intimidating utterances need to be scrupulously avoided so as not to stoke fire and let an impression of an unstable order take a firm hold of people's imagination at home and abroad.

Two solutions should be simultaneously applied on the agreed premise that there is no alternative to such a dual approach if we are to show respect to the principle of popular sovereignty. The BNP should at once withdraw blockades and hartals as the government reciprocates by removing restrictions on political programmes to be carried out by the BNP peacefully. At this stage, no more extraneous conditions need to be inserted into the equations for this minimalist programme of action. These could be taken up in time.

As Victor Hugo has said: “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star.

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