The mathematics of hartals

This is why passing laws to make the calling of hartals illegal is no solution to this intractable problem that has dogged Bangladeshi domestic politics for so long. For too many Bangladeshis, there would be an uncomfortable whiff of authoritarianism to such a move. In this nation, our right to hold hartals is, in the public mind, as fundamental and inalienable a right as the right to free assembly and free speech.

From a strictly legalistic point of view, there are any number of grounds on which hartals could presently be declared illegal under the criminal code. Intimidation, coercion, and incitement to violence are already crimes. On top of this, with its commanding majority in parliament, the ruling alliance has sufficient power to pass any kind of law it wishes to place hartals squarely beyond the legal pale.

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But the BNP has not moved to pass such a law, and nor did the AL when it was in power. Both parties recognise the benefits that the politics of hartals confer on them, and both know that they might want to call hartals when in opposition. More to the point, both know that as unpopular as hartals are with the general public, declaring them illegal would be even more unpopular and counterproductive. After all, it is simply not politically feasible to put the entire opposition behind bars every time they call a hartal (sorely though one may be tempted).

Hartals will continue to be called only so long as they continue to enjoy some level of legitimacy in the public mind as a form of political expression, and they will disappear from the public sphere only when they become so unpopular with the populace that they are no longer politically viable. This has not happened yet.

This brings me to a second and little remarked point about hartals. The fact that they are effective. But the precise way in which hartals can be an effective tool of opposition politics bears a little scrutiny. Close examination of the mathematics of hartals reveals some interesting insights. Hartals are effective but not in the way that the opposition thinks they are.

Let's take a look at the hartal scorecard of the past month and a half as an illustration of the point I am trying to make here.

The official opposition position is that the hartals it has been calling are an integral part of its one-point agenda to force the government from office. Indeed it isn't much of an exaggeration to state that, more than merely being an integral part of the agenda to get the ruling alliance to step down and call early elections, hartals are, in fact, the only tool the opposition has in its arsenal to effect this outcome.

Now, rousing rhetoric and political posturing aside, even prominent opposition leaders confide in private that the programme of hartals with which they have begun the year is unlikely to result in the stated goal of ousting the government by the end of April. The question then becomes if hartals are an ineffective means of bringing down a democratically elected government, in what way are they an effective political tool?

Hartals are an effective political tool, not, as the opposition imagines, because they are a demonstration of their strength and popularity, but because they almost always succeed in goading the government into excessive brutality in order to suppress them. Hartals typically succeed by making the government appear as undemocratic and thuggish as the opposition accuses it of being. The paradox here is that the effectiveness of hartals as a political tool is dependent almost entirely on the measures taken by the government against them.

Hartals are, by and large, unpopular with the public. The public, in general, sees hartals as evidence of the opposition's political immaturity and obstructionism and its inability to put the interests of the people ahead of its own. The public tends to place the lion's share of the blame for the inability of the government and opposition to reach some kind of workable compromise on the opposition. The government is faulted for its abuse of its majority in parliament, but the opposition is faulted even more for boycotting parliament and taking to the streets in response. This has been true regardless of who has been in power and who has been in opposition.

Hartals are inconvenient and frustrating. For many people such as small shopkeepers or day labourers the economic costs of a hartal are prohibitive. For businesses which depend on a consistent stream of revenue to cover daily operating costs and retire debt and especially for businesses in the export sector, hartals can be catastrophic. This is why the FBCCI and other business and trade bodies have consistently opposed hartals.

The only way in which the opposition can win in this kind of a show-down with the government is if the government over-reacts and tries to suppress the hartal with excessive brutality. If a hartal is permitted to proceed without undue restraint and demonstrators are permitted to voice their grievances unmolested, the hartal will succeed only in alienating the people who are inconvenienced and harmed by it.

Bearing this in mind, let us look at the hartal scorecard for the last month and a half.

The opposition called four hartals in the month of February. The government responded to each one in characteristic fashion by sending the police and ruling party activists to severely beat up the demonstrators and opposition party activists. The sickening brutality with which the government decided to break up the hartals shocked a population which otherwise would have had little sympathy for those enforcing the hartals.

As it was, the scenes of the police and ruling party activists lathi charging and indiscriminately beating up hundreds of demonstrators including women and senior members of the opposition have alienated many people from the government. The pictures of AL leaders Saber Hossain Chowdhury and Ahsanullah Master with their heads cracked open by police did more to advance the AL agenda than anything the AL could have done themselves.

The government further compounded its folly by sending the police and ruling party activists to break up a demonstration at Dhaka University protesting the stabbing of Prof. Humayun Azad. This was the event which turned the tide in this round in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Bangladeshi voters. There was widespread revulsion against the thuggish attack on this non-political protest that ultimately worked to the benefit of the AL and to the detriment of the ruling alliance.

When the dust cleared after the hartals of February and early March, the big winner was clearly the AL. If the point of hartals is to move popular opinion and sympathy in your direction and to needle the government into presenting its worst face to the public, then their programme has been wildly successful. Not because of anything the AL did, but because of what the BNP did. By responding in as intemperate and dictatorial a manner to the hartals as it did, the BNP went a long way to making the AL's point for them. This is how hartals are effective.

The opposition has called hartals for April 7-8, in ostensible service of the unrealistic goal of ousting the government by the end of the month. April's hartals are unlikely to succeed in toppling the government, but they can succeed in moving popular support incrementally towards the opposition. It will be interesting to see whether the government has finally managed to master the mathematics of hartals and figured out that the way to win this round is to let the hartals proceed with a minimum of suppression. I'm not holding my breath.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.