As I See It Column
The Independent
March 17, 2012
M. Serajul Islam
Courtesy the electronic media, the nation saw the unbelievable
extent to which the Government went to spoil the BNP’s “Cholo, Cholo Dhaka
Cholo” programme. The private TV
channels have showed days prior to the event the actions taken by the law
enforcing agencies assisted by ruling party activists to restrict/check all
busses and public transports plying to the city from the rest of the country. Even the river routes and railways were
clamped down to stop people from joining the BNP call. Nearer to March 12, all
public transport to Dhaka was virtually stopped.
The police also clamped down on the hotels and boarding houses,
issuing orders that they should not take guests till the 14th. The
police of course denied issuing such orders. Nevertheless, the electronic media
exposed that denial as untrue where hotel owners interviewed informed viewers
about huge losses. In doing so, the law enforcing agencies did not consider the
fact that the hotels and guest house are used by ordinary people who come to
Dhaka for a multitude of reasons, including treatment for life threatening
health problems.
The AL’s political leadership also went into the act. They claimed
that the BNP’s call was intended for acts of subversion in Dhaka. They linked the
claim to the line they have taken for a long time that the BNP/Jamat is
conspiring to create a breakdown of the law and order to derail the trial of
those being tried for crimes against humanity. The ruling party leaders, however, have not been
able to give convincing evidence of such conspiracies to the public except
repeating their statements like the pin caught in a broken record.
The result of the actions of the law enforcing agencies and the AL
leadership created a situation that was surreal. In the past, we have faced hartals,
shamabesh and mahashamabesh by the opposition that had put such fears in our
minds of the public that we shut ourselves in our houses and hoped and prayed
that the calls by the opposition would pass by without harming us. This time, we
faced a similar predicament of fear and apprehension but very little of it due
to the opposition and almost all due to the ruling party. Dhaka was deserted by
11th and the BNP cannot claim even a little credit for it because it
was the Government that did it all!
In the past, hartals of the opposition did not always pass by
harmlessly. Lives have been lost, property damaged and the economy was forced
to incur huge losses. We were utterly
disgusted and have been praying to the Almighty to give better sense to the
opposition not to make us and the country hostage to their politics and put an
end to hartal. It seemed like the Almighty heard us. In the past three years, unbelievable
as it may sound, the BNP called just 7/8
hartals.
A lot of people would have a lot to say about the BNP’s governance
in its last term for which it has paid badly by losing the last elections miserably.
Nevertheless, in the last 3 years, the BNP has done very little to link itself
to acts of subversion to destroy law and order to bring down the government.
Instead, the BNP has adopted strategies such as demonstrations, long marches,
etc that are guaranteed by the Constitution. Of course, many may blame the BNP
for not going to parliament but then if the BNP did that as well, then it would
have been too good to be true.
Nevertheless, even on the issue of not attending the parliament,
the BNP has their reasons. They feel that their 34 seats are so few that
in a highly partisan parliament, their views would not even have any chance of
being heard, let alone taken up for consideration. This was underscored by the
Speaker while “reprimanding” the Minister for Finance in Parliament in
parliament recently for his provocative statements against the BNP/Jamat in the
context of their March 12 event.
Those who thought that by stopping people from going to Dhaka,
they would be able to turn the BNP’s event into a flop were badly mistaken. In
the end, the number of people who turned out for the event was huge. It is
strange that the AL leaders never considered that Dhaka has close to 15 million
people and even a fraction of the people of the city would give the BNP the
number it needed to claim success. By its un-democratic steps, the BNP has been
given a much larger victory in political terms.
Few believed the police explanation that people were stopped from
coming to stop Dhaka for acts of subversion. In fact, ordinary folks interviewed on this
point by private TV channel dismissed the explanation by saying that there was
no reason for the BNP/Jamat activists to attack their own meeting. One folk
said that if the BNP/Jamat activists were at all interested in subversion, the
better target would have been the AL meeting on 14th March where everyone
was welcome to attend!
A more unbelievable explanation was given by the authorities that
said that the transport owners themselves did not run the buses on the
highways, fearing attack by the opposition. The electronic media has interviewed
the owners lamenting losses in many crores of Takas from the action of the
Government. The shutdown of the private TV channels from live telecasting of
the BNP programme was the most regrettable act of the authorities because it
badly damaged the ruling party’s democratic image and its claim of giving the
country a free media. The live telecasting of the PM’s address on 14th
March and encouraging access given to people to attend it also flagged the double
standard of the Government. These actions have also dented badly its democratic
credentials.
In the end, the Government’s fears of sabotage and subversion did
not come true. In fact, the media showed armed ruling party activists in the
streets of Dhaka trying to provoke the opposition. Surely, if sabotage was the aim of the event,
it could have been done at will. The BNP
event was to register their points against this government. In those
objectives; the BNP achieved more than it could have hoped for. The opposition’s
main claim that the government is undemocratic was successfully established by
the government’s unbelievable actions.
One question lingers in the public mind which is why did the
Government do all it did to stop the BNP event? One possible answer is that it
feared that the opposition event would draw a huge number of people from across
the country that would damage its political standing in the country badly. In the end, the BNP programme drew a
huge gathering. The public was left with no doubt that if the Government had
not acted the way it did, the March 12 event would have drawn unprecedented
numbers of people as the Government had feared and perhaps more.
Ironically therefore, by its undemocratic actions, the ruling
party strengthened that fear more successfully than the opposition would have
even if they were allowed to hold the event unhindered. Nevertheless sadly, it is democracy that has
been served badly in all that has happened by the actions of the Government
leading to March 12. BNP’s overtures to do politics the democratic way have
been spurned. It is such a shame that it the month of March, the country had to
witness such un-democratic actions that led many to suggest that the country
has returned to the Pakistan days.
People are now really worried whether by its actions the
government has pushed the country and its politics into uncertainty. The
programme given by the BNP from its Dhaka event is not encouraging with a daylong
hartal called for the 29th of March and a 90 ultimatum for the
ruling party to accept its demands. For
the time being, the BNP is relishing its current healthy position in politics
thanks almost entirely to the ruling party’s unbelievable efforts.
The writer
is a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt
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