What is the Awami League afraid of?

It seems attempts to foil BNP's mission to take over the public space is already afoot, with one killed and at least 30 injured in a police operation at the party's Naya Paltan office on Wednesday (December 7). Almost all the divisional rallies that BNP has held across the country over the past couple of months have faced obstruction in one form or the other; the pattern seems to continue ahead of the Dhaka rally scheduled for this Saturday. In addition to Wednesday's clash, the Dhaka rally is likely to face the highest level of hindrances because it is the culmination of all the divisional rallies, from which a call for a wider anti-government movement may come, according to a Prothom Alo report. According to another report from the same daily, Dhaka will be under blockades and there will be police checkpoints at every major entry point to control traffic to the rally venue. Also, ruling party leaders such as Obaidul Quader and Asaduzzaman Khan have said their party members will be on "alert" to resist BNP men.

The ruling party leaders are saying that their obstructive measures are justified, because BNP has a violent past and may repeat their "acts of terrorism." That is the justification also being used to explain the attack by the police – that it was really the BNP men who provoked law enforcement and not the other way around.  

The BNP may have had a violent past, but its divisional rallies have largely been peaceful and successful, with a few confrontations with ruling party men, which were provoked by the latter. But a fight is possibly what the Awami League is asking for, with its general secretary repeatedly saying "Khela hobe (Game on)." What sort of game is he talking about? Is it a game that will put the lives of innocent civilians in danger by showing the brute force of the party on the streets? Is it a game that will involve violence and death? If so, we don't want to be a part of that game. The game of politics needs to be played strategically and peacefully – with words, not with weapons. Our political parties need to figure out a way of doing politics without putting innocent lives at risk and taking the country to a point of no return.

We have seen in the past two elections that the Awami League wants to avoid an electoral competition by denying the opposition's demand of a neutral poll-time government, without which there has been no instance of a free and fair election. Now, we are seeing that they are not even willing to play fair on the streets. It seems they want to deny the opposition the chance to properly organise a rally – even though the party top brass had previously said to let BNP hold public demonstrations. They have put so many rules and conditions to organise rallies at Suhrawardy Udyan that it is almost impossible for the BNP to meet all of them. Then there's the fear that police will restrict BNP supporters from attending the rally by harassing them at the checkpoints at the venue and by locking some of the entry points – like they did in Rajshahi. BNP has already said Suhrawardy Udyan is not a safe place for them to convene. But the greater reality is probably that convening a large number of people in an enclosed field does not show off the party's political might of controlling the streets as well as it would if they were to hold the rally in Naya Paltan, which the party is now asking for. BNP, as well as the Awami League, may have the practice of exerting dominance on the streets in their mind.

But the Awami League is adamant about creating "direct" obstructions instead of the "indirect" ones, like we have seen in the divisional rallies, according to Prothom Alo, and foil BNP's plan of dominating the streets of the capital city. As part of this direct obstruction, police are already picking up BNP leaders and activists from all around the city and they are being implicated in "ghost cases." Hotels, hostels, and leaders' houses are already being checked. How is this acceptable? People should have the absolute right to free movement within their country of citizenship. Just because they support a party does not mean that they can be harassed this way.

All these rules, restrictions, and obstructions indicate the ruling party may be afraid of a reawakening of the opposition. If BNP can really take control of the streets on December 10, they may re-emerge as a viable alternative to the Awami League, and that is exactly what the Awami League wants to stop from happening. BNP has been positioning itself in the leadership of a broad-based opposition force that demands free and fair elections, at a critical juncture of our history when 14 continuous years of Awami League's rule has created an anti-incumbent sentiment among the people. We have seen this happen before, and this is something BNP likely wants to cash in on. If they are successful in organising the rally and take control of Dhaka streets now, then dissidents and protesters from other platforms may be emboldened to speak up as well. Then, the movement might metastasise and there might be a full-scale uprising to unseat the government. Is that the ultimate fear of the ruling party

Anupam Debashis Roy is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.