Hartal culture stages a come back?

How long this unwanted violence?

It remains shrouded in mystery why the lawyers of eminence defending Begum Khaleda Zia in the apex court in the cantonment house case did not prefer an appeal for stay of the execution of the High Court order to vacate the house after expiry of the dead line on November 12. Sensible citizenry and legal luminaries say that aware of the weak merit of the case and the end result that might come out in the ultimate legal battle, the mercurial lawyer Barrister Moudud Ahmed and a stalwart in the BNP hierarchy defending the case had already indicated in press briefings that the house issue would be sorted out in the 'Rajpath.'
Ominously, as Begum Khaleda Zia vacated her cantonment house either on the insistence of the Cantonment Board or of her own accord obeying court order, the streets of Dhaka turned into a theatre of violence. Hoodlums backed by BNP circle vandalized at least 100 vehicles and torched about a dozen of government owned and private cars. The party also issued a countrywide dawn to dusk hartal call on November 14 last that brought in its wake a nightmarish experience for the home goers before Eid-ul-Azha.
To enforce hartal just two days before the Eid-ul-Azha, the second biggest Muslim festival on such a personal issue when thousands of people were preparing to go to their village homes to celebrate Eid with their near and dear ones must have been a cruel decision. Home-bound people with their families were subjected to enormous sufferings even if they had painstakingly made their journey up to bus and launch terminals and railway station.
This has been a very lame-duck issue for the proponents of hartal to throw the country into chaos and suffering even when the BNP chairperson has already got a house in the posh Gulshan area of the city leased out to her on a token price of 101 taka on one bigha and 11 katha land.
People have been paying a heavy price through loss of lives and property whenever a hartal was imposed. And now as we see it, the biggest casualty to this post-election turmoil turns out to be the badly needed economic expansion, as investors from abroad and home grow wary of venturing into an inflammable area. It would be a very hard experience for the party that might come to power in future to get rid of this scourge of hartal.
Undeniably true, the higher a government's creditability with the private sector, as experts opine, the better will be private investment and economic growth. This calls for upholding the rule of law and establishing a judiciary independent of the interference from the executive. It must be emphasized that no nation that disregards rule of law and ignores individual rights can prosper in the long run. So instead of resorting to frequent 'hartal business' on flimsy and trivial issues, why not the aggrieved parties either protest or call strike to free the country from the interference of the executive? Because only an independent judiciary can protect the rights of an individual from arbitrary state action or from the tyranny of the majority.
When people from all segments of the society know that it is only the instruments of the government that violate individual rights, it is better to cure the disease than its symptoms. Although hartals are often used as means to challenge the government of the day, people in the country by now feel convinced that hartals these days are not means to register protest but violation of individual rights, most importantly the right to earn a living either for an individual or his family.
On the other hand the ruling party must allow the opposition to express its views freely and openly and efforts must be taken to resolve the conflicting points through discussion. Why not the mainstream opposition party take some more cogent issues to garner people's support? Even after passage of three years, the Sidr and Aila affected people in the south western part of the country are still without any shelter, have no access to safe drinking water and have no provision to eke out a living. Most disappointingly, the mainstream opposition party BNP has never raised this issue of resettlement of these unfortunate climate victims before the government.
BNP secretary general Khondakar Delwar Hossain in a press briefing warned that the party will go for tougher action after the Eid-ul Azha, presumably on this property issue! So there will be more blood-letting, more destruction of government and private properties. The question that naturally arises is : if the country could afford such colossal damage year in and year out ? It seems that the party is running short of issues other than Khaleda Zia's cantonment house debacle. If Sheikh Hasina could have given her father's house at Dhanmondi for use as Bangabandhu Memorial museum, why can't she follow the suit when she has one more house in the posh Gulshan area? She would have lived in history by making such generous gesture of giving away this 165 katha land for construction of apartment blocks for the BDR carnage Shaheed army officers' families.
It seems inconceivable that, by all reasoning and consideration, a personal issue has been brought to the fore to launch 'oust government' movement. It never conforms to any logic and political connotation that a government elected democratically has to be ousted before completing its term unless it follows authoritarian and tyrannical methods in dispensing the affairs of the state.
In democratic parlance, feuds and dissent are resolved by debates in the floors of the parliament. But the cantonment house issue is now in the court and pending the decision of the apex court , all parties have to wait to know the final verdict. And that verdict must be obeyed by all if we want to establish the rule of law in the country.
The general people in the country are obsessed by ever increasing threats to their lives that come in the form of growing menace of terrorism, sexual harassment of women, extortion, mugging and even killing of innocent in their houses, price spiral of commodities with no ostensible reason, campus violence, tender manipulation, and a host of other ills. But shockingly, this has never crossed the mind of our political leaders, as if they are only fighting for policies and power and not for anything related to people's sufferings and woes.
In absence of sound policies and proper administrative action, we are losing whatever prospect we had. Even the glimmer of garments and shrimp export that appeared to be so bright for a while, would now face serious challenges if this 'hartal culture' stages a come back again. Most outrageous, the country will be held to ransom by a handful of hoodlums who are out on the street backed by some unscrupulous politicians to protect the rights of the people! Whose rights are they protecting? If that was the avowed desire then these vast cohort of people would not have been languishing in poverty and destitution. It is about time to ponder whether the general public, especially the poor and the middle class do ever care to endorse such capricious actions.
It is harder to accept that a democratic process that has completed two decades and that should have matured in the meantime, cannot produce men and women of sturdier political morality. Taking all these ominous developments into consideration, it's about time the middle class launch a new movement to introduce probity and accountability in the affairs of the state.

Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and controller of examiantion, BUET. e-mail: [email protected]