The provocation was against the judgement of the court passed under the newly adopted law by the government. It was not necessary to go on strike when the judicial process has yet to come to its end because there will be appeal. Besides, nobody in the government can instigate truck and bus owners or transport workers to go on strike and come in the street for creating street anarchy because the court’s
judgement is not acceptable. Such bad examples were set by the political leaders in the past. Even now emphasise is more on police power than punishing any offender through court’s trial.
There is no secret that some government ministers and ruling party leaders had fuelled the crisis from behind the scenes to show disrespect to the court and asking the followers to demonstrate their muscle power. They have defied law as well as the court. This is not the way to show the government’s respect for the rule of law.
We must say the crisis that shut the inter-district bus service and city transportation came as a huge suffering to the people and damage to businesses. The people were forced to walk on foot to and from offices in the city. Many victims were stranded outside and could not go anywhere.
The Dhaka court handed down the truck owner death sentence and life term to the other as per the law.
The problem is in our politics discussion for solving any problem and respect for law or the court is not a big consideration. Politics is for remaining above law and resorting to might is right method.
It was until Wednesday noon when the High Court asked the government to bring normalcy to transport sector within 24 hours and also issued a rule why such strike against court verdicts should not be declared illegal, transport workers, bus owners and government ministers hastily sat together and the strike quickly ended. If the court did not intervene the situation would have turned worse.
The worrying aspect in our politics is that respect for law is missing and as a consequence arbitrary power is used by everybody who is connected with the government.
There is chaos and anger all over the country. Unless the government is respectful to law and the judiciary our fear is that there will be widespread chaos from a small beginning from anywhere.
Punishing the wrong and easy ones will not solve the problem. The government must reassess the whole direction of politics. Its dependence too much on police is not political leadership.
