The Hindu : Khaleda throws a challenge to Opposition

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 01, 2004

International

International

Khaleda throws a challenge to Opposition

By Haroon Habib

DHAKA, FEB. 29. The Bangladesh Prime Minister, Begum Khaleda Zia, has said that her Government will not resign even single day ahead of its tenure, despite the main Opposition Awami League's intensified street agitation to force the Government to quit.

Ms Khaleda told a party rally in Dhaka on Saturday, "We will not resign and elections will be held not a day ahead of time." In response to her arch rival, Sheikh Hasina's pledge to force her Government to step down, the chief of the four-party alliance challenged the Opposition to bring a no-confidence motion in Parliament "to test the people's confidence" in the Government.

Awami League has been boycotting Parliament for the last eight months.

The meeting in the capital on Saturday drew up a series of programmes to face the Opposition onslaught.

She also reminded the Opposition that the people had given her Government the mandate to rule for five years.

By calling hartals and "setting public properties on fire, they cannot topple my Government", she said and warned the Opposition of dire consequences. "Do not expect flowers in return from the police while you keep on biting them."

Terming the hartal "sheer violence", Ms Khaleda, whose party enforced a series of such hartals while in the Opposition, said the Government would be "compelled to take action against those who are out to harm people's property in the name of hartals".

The Prime Minister gave a twist to the attack on the eminent poet and novelist, Humayun Azad, a professor of Dhaka University, who is now `clinically dead' at the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka.

While the general perception is that the attack was carried out by the country's religious fundamentalists who are partners in the ruling alliance, Ms Khaleda blamed "pro-hartal activists" for the incident.

"They did not even hesitate to stab a dignified teacher to create anarchy with an aim to making the hartal a success", said Ms Khaleda.

Dr. Azad was stabbed as he was walking to his residence at the Dhaka University campus on Friday night.

Police said three unidentified youths stabbed Dr. Azad and exploded two bombs to make their escape.

Dr. Azad is a prominent writer and professor in the Bengali department of Dhaka University.

Highly controversial in the eyes of religious fundamentalists, Dr. Azad recently wrote a novel, "Pak Sar Jamin Sad Bad" (the first line of Pakistan's national anthem) which was critical of the role of Pakistanis and their local collaborators during Bangladesh's independence struggle in 1971.

Several Islamist activists denounced the book when it went on display at the ongoing Bangla Academy book fair in Dhaka.

Some religious parties belonging to the ruling alliance had attacked the writer on the floor of Parliament and demanded a ban on the book.

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