[ALOCHONA] Allies’ outburst and High Court rule put AL in tight corner

Editorial New Age 30/11/10
Allies' outburst, High Court rule put AL in tight corner

This Sunday was especially embarrassing for the Awami League-led government and, more precisely, the Awami League itself. The ruling party was first castigated, in no uncertain terms, by its left-leaning alliance partners for its failure to check the price spiral of essential commodities and arrest the drastic downslide in law and order. According to a report front-paged in New Age on Sunday, at a meeting of the ruling alliance, the left-leaning parties also accused leaders and activists of the Awami League and its front organisation of carrying out tender manipulation and extortion. The left-leaning components of the ruling alliance also appeared particularly peeved at the party's reluctance to convene meetings with its allies regularly and even suggested that it approached its allies only when it needed them. While the AL general secretary sought to put up a brave face after the meeting, his claim that the alliance partners `expressed satisfaction over most of the issues' apparently lacked both confidence and conviction.
   Worse even, the High Court on the same day issued a rule on the government to explain in two weeks why its inaction to stop the increase in price of soybean oil would not be declared illegal. According to a report also front-paged in New Age on Monday, the court also asked the chief control of export and import, and the chairman of the Chittagong Port Authority to inform the court within four weeks on how soybean oil had been imported in the past six months and at what prices. Implicit in the apex court's rules seems to be the suspicion that market manipulation may be rampant in case of the edible oil.
   Even more awkwardly for the Awami League, the two developments took place two days before a countrywide dawn-to-dusk hartal (general strike) called by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party for Tuesday in protest against, among other things, the government's failure to contain the prices of essential commodities and arrest the deterioration of law and order. Needless to say, the criticism by the left-leaning components in the ruling alliance and the rule by the High Court underscore the legitimacy of the BNP rationale for today's hartal, and undermine the ruling party's attempt at portraying the opposition's call for hartal as a self-serving exercise.
   Importantly still, the ruling party's combative posture in relation to the opposition programme and high-handed actions against the opposition leaders and activists have apparently come to be cast in a poor light, reflecting what could be essentially its inherent intolerance with expressions of dissent and displeasure. Regrettably, however, the ruling party is not quite known for its openness to reason and reality, and may still go ahead with its not-so-covert plan for employment of restrictive and repressive measures, to foil the opposition programme. If it does, as we have commented in these columns only on Monday, politics will irrevocably hurtle down the path of conflict and confrontation, and it will not be able to blame the consequent chaos and disorder squarely on the opposition.

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