Khaleda Zia's bait
We are more exasperated than surprised, more outraged than shocked by opposition leader Khaleda Zia offering handsome rewards of power and position to ruling party leaders should they join the BNP. She has swung herself on to the irresponsibility and naiveté tangent taking much of the shine off the improved image she acquired lately.
In recent months, opposition leader Khaleda Zia's stock with the people seemed to be on the rise in some areas. She has been talking less and talking sensibly, with the strident rhetoric of the past largely sanitised. Materially, she drew appreciation for being extremely selective in calling hartals. As a matter of fact, she appeared to set an example as an opposition leader taking an alternative path to hartal. She opted for peaceful road marches and rallies to make her points with the people. Although her vehicle riding road marches would create traffic congestions taking time to untangle, yet the country was largely spared the ordeal, hardship and losses that hartals invariably would have otherwise caused.
We also noticed a certain sign of maturity and leadership when she took active interest to write letters to Indian prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh engaging him on vital bilateral issues rather than go for her characteristic anti-India rhetoric. Particularly her last letter to the Indian PM echoing public sentiments over the latest development on Tipaimukh dam project on the Barak river, and the Indian leader's prompt reply to her missive spoke of a proactive constructive role as opposition leader.
Against this backdrop, her publicly soliciting defection from a rival political party through a cheap method of enticement to swell her ranks is highly unprincipled and morally repugnant. Her agenda of toppling the government and invitation for defections from Awami League are both sides of the same coin.
This is taking politics to a new low of a disdainful disregard for public morality and minimum ethics of political behaviourism in inter-party relationship. Isn't BNP a party based on an ideology? So, why does it allow its perceived values to be confused with pure expediency?
Before the latest reckless overture to ruling party leaders, the opposition leader had made the highly irresponsible remark absolving Jamaat leaders Matiur Rahman Nizami, Ali Ahsan Muzaheed, Delwar Hossain Saidee, Qamruzzaman and Kader Mollah of their heinous part in perpetrating crimes against humanity in 1971.
Unless she comes out of the self-contradiction trap, what she gains by the positive, she will lose by the negative.
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