When the leaders of Awami League celebrated victory over the jail sentence of Begum Zia, BNP men also exercised critical restraint. The BNP party men very distinctly showed a new rend towards peaceful political protests avoiding violence in street action and instead they are organising masses to gather public support behind to their cause.
The rejection of violence by BNP men such as street vandalism, torching of vehicles and fighting pitch battles with ruling party cadres has been widely viewed by common people as a good move towards positive party politics.
BNP men has the right to organize protests and demand release of party chief so long as they will be peaceful and non-violent. This is perhaps for the first time they did not give the ruling party the opportunity to turn their protest into bloody, violent act.
BNP men were in huge number in the city streets and all over on Thursday to face ruling party cadres and raise their protests but they consciously avoided it.
This is no doubt a distinctly qualitative change in BNP politics that did not miss attention of even the common people. The question is how long will BNP be able to sustain such non-violent politics in facing ruling party’s provocations, torture and arrest in the election year.
We must say people are quite conscious, they are not fool and watching the development. Police, army and public administration are also not keeping their eyes closed. Saving democracy and establishing the rule of law is the responsibility of all for maintaining law and order.
Meanwhile indiscriminate arrests by police in the city and elsewhere throughout the country had terrorized the nation. None had come to create chaos in the city. Police could have avoided such arrests. They need to be people’s police. Now that the innocent ones must be released at the earliest.
We must say it is time for both the major political parties to denounce violent politics. People want peace and politics must be peaceful in the first place.
Now that Begum Zia’s conviction is achieved, the government has to prove now how honest it is in pursuing big corruption cases going unattended.
