Should hartal be declared illegal in Bangladesh?

layperson · #1 August 3, 2006, 02:14 PM

I was just curious to find out what all you people think about the hartal issue regarding bangladesh. Everyone would definitely agree that hartal is bad for the country. This is pretty much an unanimous observation. What I am interested in is do you think it should be banned and declared illegal in Bangladesh ?

I think so and I will provide my reasoning behind it. Hartal is a democratic right that is being abused incessantly in Bangladesh as a lot of other things as well. However abusing hartal has far reaching consequences than abusing other things. As long Hartal is legal there would always be some ignorant "leader" who will try and enforce it. What this does is it creates utter chaos and destruction not to mention the huge financial losses. People who argue for hartal say that it is the right of the opposition in democracy. But I say in a country where there is democracy only on paper hartal should be banned and deemed illegal. There are other ways to protest without having to destroy private property and incurring huge loss economically. What do you think ?

Fazal · #2 August 3, 2006, 02:23 PM

Some useful past discussion about this related matter:

What are the alternatives to hartal?

Things to do in Dhaka.. (during hartal)

layperson · #3 August 3, 2006, 02:38 PM

Sorry for the repeat of this topic. I was not aware of these threads. Mods if you deem it unnecessary you can delete this thread. Thanks for the links Fazal.

gatekeeper · #4 August 8, 2006, 04:11 PM

Should HARTALS be declared illegal in Bangladesh? It probably shoould be but as soon as the govt. does that there'll be hartals around the country protesting this!!

Hatebreed · #5 August 8, 2006, 04:22 PM

There should be an independant nation-wide survey during the "election" to ask the general public what they think. This way the opposition party can't accuse the gov't for meddling with their democratic rights and the gov't can't rig the polls (hopefully). Since the public consists of both supporters of different political parties and neutrals, they can all have their say and ultimately make this decision in a democratic manner. If the polls are 'for' banning hartal then a law should be passed and put to effect immediately after the next gov't is elected.

Ok may be I'm just a wishful thinker..