A ray of hope in the murky situation

The first move by the ruling party has definitely headed off an imminent showdown with the opposition which had previously scheduled a siege around Hawa Bhaban for the same day. And the latter decision of the opposition not to instantaneously go for hartal in spite of the reckless arrests of their activists and other forms of police highhandedness centring around the Hawa Bhaban siege programme reflected a healthy use of alternative options for political protestation.

We should not overlook the maturity signals because these are laced with premonitions of a political catastrophe given rise to by the spurts of unmitigated political brinkmanship. Nor should we feel overwhelmed by the speed of events. On the contrary, the ruling party and the opposition must take a pause, and build up on those two maturing signs thereby helping to expand the cycle of positive attitudes from what are mere dots now.

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But, at the same time, we cannot but feel distraught of the highhandedness shown by the government to crush the opposition dissent. Its indiscriminate picking up of youngsters from train, launch and bus stations, arrests of opposition activists and foiling of their demonstration programmes at the points of origin, have had two fall-outs. One, we think the government is sealing off all avenues for the opposition to assemble, hold rallies and put their points across to the people. Toppling the government is an unsupportable agenda, but there should be no physical threat perception overkill on the part of the government where the opposition is left with no space to operate. We feel that the closing down of outlets for the opposition might lead them to go back on the hartal course which we dread so much. Need we repeat that The Daily Star is avowedly opposed to hartal?

Secondly, we don't also understand the government's recourse to reckless arrests which is touching the nerves of ordinary citizens. Why should the government court adverse public opinion when it can help it?

The bottomline, therefore, is this: the faint silver-line around the cloud that the JCD's withdrawal from a bellicose programme on April 21 and opposition's eschewal of impulsive hartal represented must be developed into a cycle of positive engagement between the two sides.