Khaleda-Prodi Meet
Never has the brief report customarily published following the opposition leader Begum Zia's meeting with a visiting head of government been so eloquent. Her Friday's courtesy call on Italian Prime Minister Prof Romano Prodi went off well - on a note of mutual enlightenment and healthy positivism.
Behoving her status as a national leader and head of a shadow government, Begum Zia cast aside her out-of-power inhibitions and made a direct appeal to the Italian Prime Minister to boost his country's investment in Bangladesh. In deference to diplomatic niceties such meetings take place as a matter of routine but these do not necessarily have to be mechanical. These also provide occasions for making a sober departure from the trading of caustic and testy remarks one has got accustomed to witnessing between the government party and the opposition.
There is a terse sentence from the press release BNP issued at the end of Khaleda-Prodi tete-à-tete: "the opposition leader also apprised him of the current political stalemate in Bangladesh". Whereupon, we believe, the Italian Prime Minister with the knowledge of his own country's politics uttered these words of wisdom: "democracy can flourish only through cooperation between the government and the opposition parties."
What kind of cooperation the opposition leader of Bangladesh is extending for the smooth running of democracy in our country and vice versa? We have been unfailingly consistent in saying that the onus for making up with the opposition lies basically on the government party. But even with that kind of a position taken by us we cannot condone BNP's intransigent boycott of the Jatiya Sangsad. Parliament is the place for the issues BNP has taken to the streets for months now. Their first duty to the nation is to go back to the parliament. How can Parliamentary boycott be the absolute bone of contention in a democracy?
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