THE city life was totally paralyzed yesterday as tens of thousands of Awami League activists and supporters landed on the streets by mid-day to gather at Suhrawardy Udyan to attend the celebration of Bangabandhu’s Homecoming Day. It was a terrible day for city dwellers as transports remained stalled for many hours in the streets and businesses were defunct at many city points as party workers paraded through the streets coming from the city outskirts in trucks and buses. Bangabandhu returned to the country on January 10, 1972 as leader of Bangladesh liberation war from Pakistani prison through London. This is no doubt a historic day and deserves to be celebrated that Awami League does every year.
The ruling party men only five days ago held two public meetings in the capital on January 5. On the same day BNP held a meeting to denounce the January 5 election of 2014. Earlier the founding anniversary of Bangladesh Chhatra League — the student front of Awami League was held in noisy parade throughout the country.
What many believe is that political events by any party should not be allowed disrupting public life. No party should be unconcerned about inconveniences of the general public. Days have changed and it is unnecessary to spend crores of taka in arranging big public meetings to send message to the people or show public support. Everyone knows the cost of such big crowd gatherings. We are not that rich a country that wasting money should not mean anything. Such responsibility lies more with the ruling party. They are the rulers and can rule anyway. Many believe such meetings should be held on public holidays and preferably away from the city.
The country needs leaders who do not exploit the people, cause no public inconvenience unnecessarily only to show the ego of public support. The crowd gathering politics is outdated and unsafe also. Have sympathy for the people.
