When would enough be enough?
When would enough be enough?
Give yourselves and the nation a break!
The United Nations has voiced its concern over continuing political violence and fatalities in Bangladesh for more than a month. The former UN Assistant Secretary General, Political Affairs, Oscar Fernandez Taranco has been reportedly assigned to coordinate with Bangladesh government in matters of persuading the contending parties to resolve their differences.
From that perspective, it is important to get to the brass-tacks. As fallouts of ruthlessly relentless blockade and hartals reach horrific levels, the BNP-led alliance calls these a political movement and the ruling party persists with a law and order approach to a fundamentally political issue.
For the BNP's part, seeing the burning and killing sprees with bomb blasts, derailment of trains, torching of vehicles and denying livelihoods to people as parts of political movement based on what is claimed as 'spontaneous' support of the people is a measure of how dehumanised a political party can get. If the BNP does not want to alienate itself further from people and court acts of subversion, it should now call a halt to blockade and shutdown allowing a breather in the tense situation.
The onus of generating cross-party confidence lies fundamentally with the government. The way the political mercury has risen between both sides, a patient gradient approach will have to be adopted by the AL and BNP. In the meanwhile intimidating utterances should be avoided and fetters removed from the BNP, allowing it space for carrying out legitimate political programmes.