It is indeed a sad truth that the AL could find no alternative to hartal to draw public attention to its grievances, which range from killing of its activists to suppression of its democratic rights. The points raised by the party are serious enough to send worrying signals. But the AL is not paying due attention to the democratic rights of the people who are totally disinterested in any negative move like hartal. Hartal is a punishment that is inflicted upon citizens by political parties pursuing their own agenda and spontaneous response to such calls is clearly a thing of the past.

But the parties show no signs of being affected by what people are thinking; nor are they concerned about the economy which takes a lethal blow with a day lost for no good reason.

So a hartal has very little in it that could arouse any sympathy for its purveyors. It does put some kind of psychological pressure on the ruling party eager not to give the opposition any space anywhere. But the opposition should carefully weigh whether this pressure is worth exerting when the nation suffers huge losses.

While we condemn the opposition for imposing hartal, at the same time we condemn government's attitude towards the opposition which is both oppressive and exclusionary. The ruling party must also go for some serious introspection. For example, the AL is blamed for boycotting parliament -- an accusation that is hard to refute. But as and when it did, it was neither given due respect nor opportunity to actively participate in its workings. We don't yet know why the leader of the opposition was not given permission to pay her due respects in the state mourning for the dead peacekeepers, despite her willingness to be present there. We consider the move as BNP's using the armed forces for its partisan politics. The army should not have been used in this manner.

The move was ill-advised and indicative of a highly rigid position that the ruling party has adopted vis-à-vis the opposition. A sensible opposition pre-supposes a sensible government.