Not an auspicious sign
THE capital Dhaka bore a surreal look on March 12.
For four days the government had employed every mechanism at their disposal to stop people from entering Dhaka and on the day of the opposition’s alliance grand rally, the pressure was mounted further, as the police, the Rapid Action Battalion and the Border Guards Bangladesh hand-in-hand with activists of the ruling party-backed Bangladesh Chhatra League, Juba League, Sramik League and even Noujan Sramik League, in red uniform, frisked, harassed and chased people out of the city or restrained them from reaching various places in the city. Ordinary people suffered boundlessly as all forms of public transport almost disappeared, while opposition activists were subject to violent attacks and harassment as they tried to reach their destination at Naya Paltan to attend the rally. The government further clamped down on the rally itself by restricting its boundary, time and even its sound arrangement.
And yet, about five lakh people attended the rally, which was a culmination of the opposition alliance’s march to Dhaka, in the process blatantly defying both the geographical boundary and time limit set by the government. With the level of autocratic muscle exercised by the government, especially on Monday, the success of the rally clearly marks both a political and moral defeat for the government. It also to an extent lends credibility to the opposition’s opposition to, and ordinary people’s serious doubts about, having free and fair national elections under an elected government. After all, Monday turned out to be a spectacle of the length to which the state’s agencies can be employed to restrain people’s democratic rights, and how a political government can bind together the state’s forces and party’s forces in the same assembly. It would also be fair to say that the government, rather willingly and in full consciousness, treated ordinary people’s well-being with clear disdain, for the sake of suppressing political opposition. It was a slap on the face of people’s verdict, a verdict that usually decides their fate in power come election time.
On the other end, the success of Monday’s rally despite the heavy duty suppression can only make the opposition quarters grow in confidence and even, maybe, become more defiant. With the government at one end autocratic and repressive, and the opposition increasingly defiant, it can create a horror scenario for the ordinary people, suggesting that the controversial issue of the non-party caretaker government would be eventually resolved in the streets, instead of peaceful negotiation across the table.
While it is unbecoming of any democratically-oriented mind to lend support to any form of unelected government for any period of time, the fact remains that the opposing forces in the country have absolutely no faith in each other and, rightly so, if only the events of Monday are taken into account, leaving everything aside. Therefore, it falls upon the democratically-oriented social forces to create pressure on the political forces to come up with an acceptable formula for the transfer of power. Otherwise, the sufferings of the ordinary people on Monday, and the days leading up to it, would prove to be only the tip of the iceberg compared to what they can suffer if the opposing political forces remain rooted to their present stand and posture in the days to come.
New Age | Newspaper
or muslim backyard ? 
20+ PhDs not being able to anticipate centuries of slavery, and you did?? 
