Do Sit Down with the Speaker

THE fact of the matter is Speaker Humayun Rasheed Chowdhury has written to the Opposition leader for the third time in a row imploring her to return to the Parliament. And the news is that a reply from the BNP chief is under process. We want the third reply from the BNP leader not to be another No like the earlier two replies to the Speaker's letters have been; for, as we have entreated with her in our yesterday's editorial comment: "Khaleda Zia, please understand that continuous No...... will get us nowhere." Since the whole exercise is about talking the way out of the tangle, regardless of the recriminations about who had a bigger hand in creating it, anything that helps implacable adversaries to sit across the table and address differences should be welcomed. After what has happened, the opposition leaders should know better than anybody else that some kind of a dialogue with the Speaker or the ruling party has to precede before the deck is clear for them to rejoin the parliament.

So, our fervent appeal to the opposition will be: don't get caught up in the preconditions whirlpool or hold the nation hostage to your ego-trip that has crossed one critical threshold after another. We have editorially endorsed your position wherever we found it to reasonable and justified. Yes, the Speaker can be faulted for not ensuring the implementation of the four-point agreement reached twice over in order that the opposition got a full play in the parliament with due electronic media coverage accompanying the same. Yes, there are grievances against repression and false cases. Whenever the situation demanded we deprecated foul-play, unjust treatment and bias against the opposition.

But it is the same voice which is now urging the opposition to abide by what the nation wants them to do. The nation to the last man feels that it has had enough of ego-centric politics and would have no more of it. So, our counsel to the opposition leadership is: write your reply to the Speaker on a positive note, at least sit down with him for a talk, tell him what is needed to be done for your return to parliament and thereby prepare the ground for a full-scale dialogue with the ruling party to discuss the next general election.

Participation in a dialogue process does neither mean shifting of positions or acceptance of defeat in the round one, as the political novices will only have us believe. On the contrary, it shows respect to popular aspirations. Speaking of public expectation, the PM's personalised vulgar attack on the opposition leader could be made up for by a courteous expression of a regret over it. That won't mean any 'defeat' or shifting of position either.