AL's welcome step

In this backdrop, nothing could be more welcome than the opposition AL providing names of its MPs to chief whip Delwar Hossain for incorporation in the 45 JS standing committees. The ball is now in the ruling party's court. The opposition has dove-tailed its earlier demand for chairmanship of at least ten committees to their main overture of placing names on the committees. But principally the opposition's mind seems made up on the question of ending their boycott of committees which sounds but only logical as a natural extension of their earlier decision to join parliament and play a hands-on role on the floor of the House.

On the important question of the opposition chairing some of the vital oversight committees, we have been consistently of the view that such berths should be given to the opposition for the sake of ensuring balanced lawmaking, and transparency and accountability of governance. As a matter of fact, conceding such an accommodation would set a precedent, although this is prevalent as a standard practice in well-established democracies, for any opposition party in the future to benefit by.

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That's all very good; but we are baffled by the fact that 43 letters have been written to as many diplomatic missions in Dhaka 'explaining' AL's stand on the issue. Why should the opposition party of a sovereign country send missive to foreign envoys to convey a certain sense of reservation about something they have otherwise positively decided upon? As well as undercutting self-respect it must have caused embarrassment to the diplomatic community. The AL whip claimed that they were entitled to be doing so because the ruling party leaders had 'complained' of their abstention from committees to the foreign missions. Even if the latter is true, 'two wrongs don't makes something right'. We should give a better account of solving our own problems.