A meaningless hartal

Actually, it came completely out of the blue. There was no buildup, no preparations, no steaming into the hartal day, with the result that the public were left in a state of bewilderment and disbelief.

It was wrongly conceived, too. A great cricket event, the ODI series with India in Dhaka was into the second encounter yesterday on the back of a fighting finish by Bangladesh at the Chittagong ODI. It generated a natural interest in the public to watch the first of the Dhaka ODIs, but, of course, the hartal call cast a shadow over it.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

The hartal was called to protest the diesel and kerosene price hikes. Public interest would have been served well if a strongly worded statement of protest were issued by the Awami League instead of going for hartal. Without holding public demonstrations or staging street protests the AL jumped to the high-pitched option, the extreme action. As a matter of fact, the price spiral had been on the AL's protest agenda as part of a wider charter of demands, invoking which the party had called hartals earlier on. So, why the one-point hartal?

We are opposed to hartal as a matter of principle, because it causes hardship to people, is economically damaging and politically unpopular, which is why, we should like to think, the AL has been going in for effective alternatives like the human chain.

Why then the Sunday's meaningless hartal?