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Opposition's 48-hour ultimatum
[Bangla Daily Star] Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums.. 's offer of talks to the opposition for reaching an understanding on ways to hold national election with participation of all political parties has met with rejection from the opposition. The nation is left disappointed.  Khaleda ZiaThree-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ... in her massive public rally at Shapla Chattar yesterday gave a 48-hour ultimatum to the government to announce its decision to restore caretaker government system or else she would accentuate movement for the ouster of the incumbent government. Expressing solidarity with Hefajat-e Islam's siege programme scheduled today, she virtually seemed to have leaned on the radical side as counter-poise to Shahbagh Projonmo Chottor. With the pronouncement of an ultimatum, the barometer of political temperature has shot up. We have to see how Hefajat-e Islam's blockade programme goes today to be able to gauge the level of tension. However sympathetic we have been with the opposition's sentiments over a lack of space and oppression they have been subjected to, we have to say that ultimatum is not the language of democratic politics. The spirit in which the prime minister had offered talks to the opposition should have been met with some reciprocity in view of the fact that without discussion between major political parties no pathway can be laid for peaceable and negotiated settlement of the interim caretaker issue. This brings the stance of the opposition BNP into a sharper focus. Its insistence that the government concede the demand for a restoration of the caretaker system has in recent days been tempered by a call for a credible election-time government prior to the actual voting. That seems like having the potential for a good beginning, a process the opposition will have been well advised to carry forward through engaging the ruling party in negotiations across the table. But we must make it abundantly clear that the government needs to release all the tossed in the slammer ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... opposition leaders and withdraw cases against them by way of proving its bona fides in regard to creating an atmosphere conducive to holding a dialogue between the two sides. This is absolutely crucial for the flickering prospect for talks to materialise in some shape or form. We should emphasise here that laying any precondition to the talks cannot be helpful just as an open-ended unfocused discourse would be of little meaning. Posted by: Fred 2013-05-05 |
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