There might be some very good reason for calling hartals, but as yet, the general public has not been let into the secret. Not that it particularly cares, knowing only too well that politics is not about their wishes and wills, but a crass and continuous strategy to usurp power. The prescription followed by Bangladesh's opposition, whichever, reads: a hartal a day will blow the government away.
That is the way it has been for some time now. The onus of calling hartals presently rests on the shoulders of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and three others—Jamaat-e-Islami, Islamic Oikya Jote (United Islamic alliance) and everyone's old foe, the Jatiyo Party (JP) of former president Hussain Mohammed Ershad. The foursome has been boycotting Parliament and raising havoc on the streets, in an all-too-obvious bid to bring down the constitutionally sanctioned government of Sheikh Hasina Wajed's Awami League (AL).
This is not say that the AL has been more sinned against than sinning. For what the BNP-led opposition is now demanding is exactly what the AL was demanding when it was in the opposition before 1996, i.e. fresh parliamentary elections. And back then Sheikh Hasina had as her allies the selfsame Jamaat-e-Islami and JP. The AL used the hartal tactic back then against the BNP, bringing the country to a halt through interminable stoppages.
The tactic worked so well that, in the three years the AL has been in power, Bangladesh has been witnessing a repeat performance by the present opposition demanding the same thing: call off the government, and call in the elections. Why? Because the government doesn't enjoy public support anymore! Not that the public is being asked its opinion. The government's reply is a tape recording or carbon copy of what the BNP government was saying till 1994, that there will be no stepping down, if at all, till the end of the stipulated 5-year term, which ends July 2001.