Bangladesh's main opposition BNP and its rightwing allies today exploded crude bombs and carried out vandalism to enforce a nationwide general strike as part of their campaign for restoration of the caretaker government for election oversight.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led 18-party opposition alliance, with fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami being a major partner, set at least one truck ablaze and damaged several other vehicles alongside exploding bombs with activists appearing on streets for brief periods evading security vigils, witnesses and police said.
But, reports said, a huge number of commercial and private transports plied on the street as Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) personnel and police enforced a sharp vigil.
"BNP will not allow the government to hold the general elections under a partisan government... The caretaker system was scrapped for election engineering (manipulation)," BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia's adviser Shamsuzzaman Dudu told a press briefing at the party central office at Nayapaltan area as several hundred police in riot gears were on guard outside.
Dudu reiterated threats to boycott the next general elections slated for early next year unless the ruling Awami League arrange a non-party interim government for overseeing elections.
This was the fourth such shutdown in the past 25 days while the BNP and Jamaat earlier called the stoppage also for protesting what they called police atrocities on activists of newly floated radical Hefazat-e-Islam and the death penalty by a tribunal to one of the Jamaat stalwarts for 1971 "crimes against humanity" siding with Pakistani troops.
The opposition, earlier, said it was expected to join the coming parliament session as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina repeatedly proposed dialogue to overcome the impasse.
Awami League general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam said the government even could amend the constitution to solve the crisis.
The developments came as the UN earlier this month called Hasina's dialogue offer to be a good "starting point" to resolve the impasse but feared the failure to reach quickly a consensus could invite another military intervention.
UN assistant secretary general Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, who visited Dhaka as a special envoy of the UN secretary general Ban-Ki-moon, warned that the "history of Bangladesh" suggested what the consequence could be unless the political leadership could resolve their differences through a constructive dialogue on the electoral system.
Fernandez visibly referring to the installation of the 2006-2008 military-backed interim government under emergency rules when the army intervened as rivalry between the then ruling BNP and opposition Awami League witnessed an extreme stage ahead of scheduled political elections.
Earlier, Awami League insisted that the caretaker administration proved counterproductive in the past as the army intervened taking the advantage of the system while entrustment of non-elected people with temporary state power was contrary to constitution and democratic spirit.
