Business as usual

The opposition continues to resist the notion that calling hartals makes them unpopular with the voting public. It is true that the public is unhappy with the recent decision of the government to raise fuel prices and that some kind of programme to oppose the price hike was called for and would be met with general approval, but calling a hartal will only succeed in adding to the woes of those who will be the hardest hit by the price rise in the first place, and is surely not what the people had in mind.

The continued reliance on hartals, apart from being poor politics, seems to indicate, on the one hand, a lack of imagination on the part of the opposition, and on the other, an indifference to the wishes of the public. Neither is an encouraging or attractive trait.

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One interesting factor is that Dr. Kamal Hossain's Gono Forum has taken the decision to disassociate itself from the hartal and is not supporting it. This difference of opinion within the opposition coalition is in and of itself noteworthy, but there is more to the story than a mere difference of opinion with respect to the calling of the hartal.

Dr. Hossain has for some time been trying to convince the AL to return to parliament, at least for Thursday's opening of the 18th session. The thinking behind this idea is that parliament would be the appropriate place for voicing recriminations with respect to August 17, and would provide a platform for the opposition to be heard and demand answers from the PM.

The opposition returning to parliament would have made for great political theatre. The leader of the opposition could have taken with her a list of questions for the PM and demanded answers. The questions could have encompassed not only the government's failure on August 17, but also the recent fuel price hike, and any number of other issues from inflation to power generation, where the government has conspicuously failed to deliver.

The bomb blasts of August 17 would have provided the perfect backdrop for demanding a hearing. Basically, Sheikh Hasina had the opportunity to place the PM in the dock, so to speak, and act as the prosecuting attorney in front of the entire nation. The decision not to use August 17 as an occasion to try to force debate in parliament must count as another in a long line of missed opportunities on the part of the main opposition.

Had such an approach been decided on and the return to parliament been built up and publicised sufficiently before hand, it would have led the news, not only in Bangladesh, but perhaps all across the region, and might even been a lead story on BBC world service.

If the opposition were denied the opportunity to speak, or their microphones were cut off, then that would have been headline news too. Hasina could then have held an impromptu press conference on the steps of the JS and read out her questions there. With no one from the government to answer them, her questions would have had the effect of a prosecutorial brief and helped to frame the national debate according to the opposition's terms.

Incidentally, if the opposition were still adamant that they wished to call a hartal, then that would have been the time to do so. Hartals will never appear to be thoughtful public policy and they will never be popular with the general public, but the best time to call one would be in the immediate aftermath of being denied democratic space in parliament in front of the eyes of the world.

It could have been a public relations coup that would have harnessed the dissatisfaction of the general public with the current state of affairs into a potent weapon against the administration, and put them squarely on the defensive.

But more than merely an opportunity to score political points, the opposition has missed a real opportunity to build on the government failures that culminated in August 17, and the resultant sense of insecurity among the public, to seize the initiative and take control of the national discourse.

The events of August 17 were the perfect opportunity to change direction. On the one hand, the bomb blasts crystallised the failings of the current administration, and are a useful synecdoche for how the government has fallen short of expectations. On the other hand, the bomb blasts also increased the public's sense of insecurity, and created an opening for the opposition to project itself as statesmanlike and reassuring.

The public is searching desperately for leadership in these anxious times, and the opposition, had it correctly understood the mood of the nation, could have stepped authoritatively into the void.

One corner-stone of this new approach could have been calling a hartal cease-fire. Perhaps until the end of the year. Since hartals are more or less ineffective -- when they are not counter-productive -- this would have been a no-lose proposition. The opposition would have looked statesmanlike, open to compromise, and responsive to public opinion, and it could have leveraged maximum political advantage from the decision.

The decision to continue like before, epitomised by the calling of the hartal on September 18, makes one wonder who exactly is advising Hasina. The advice she seems to be getting -- based on the decisions that she has made -- seems to be so uniformly poor that one wonders whether it is mere incompetence on the part of her advisers or whether something more sinister is at work.

There are so many issues for the opposition to take to the people that they do not need further enumeration here. If the opposition ever actually put together a document pointing out the government's failings, demanding an answer as to how such a state of affairs could have come about, and outlining what it would do differently, it would make for potent politics.

The rallies and sit-in demonstrations that have been organised in the run-up to the hartal are a good idea that will help to keep the government's shortcomings in the public eye. But the hartal itself will only be a distraction from the message that the opposition needs to be formulating.

The opposition needs to put together in simple and straightforward language a platform that is easily understood, persuasive, and credible. It needs to put the issues on posters and leaflets and continue to hold rallies and town hall meetings to create awareness around these issues.

Will the opposition ever learn? It is not often that a political party or parties get dealt the kind of hand that the government has generously dropped into the opposition's lap. But by reverting to business as usual, the opposition seems determined to squander the opportunity that it has been given. In other words, nothing much seems to have changed.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.