Hasina-Khaleda embrace sparks hope in the people

People want amiable relations between the two top leaders
Political arch-rivals Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia should maintain regular social relations instead of making occasional gestures in order to improve political culture here, said members of the civil society including singers, development activists and researchers.
An amiable relationship between the two top politicians will be a positive signal to leaders and activists of their parties, which will help to prevent conflict across the country, they said.
When Farida Parvin, singer of Lalon songs, was asked on Sunday what she thought of the emotional meeting of Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia at Sudha Sadan on Saturday when both tearfully embraced each, she told New Age, ‘All of us, even if we are in opposite [political] camps, must maintain normal social relations.’
‘If this happens regularly, there will be no conflict,’ said the renowned singer. ‘It is unacceptable to the people that they [Hasina and Khaleda] do not maintain social relations and at times they do not even talk with each other.’
‘They should respect each other, in spite of criticising each other,’ she said. ‘Lalon, Rabindranath and Kazi Nazrul Islam have written of love and benevolence in their songs and poems.’
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s chairperson, Khaleda Zia, on Saturday evening went to Sudha Sadan to condole the death of nuclear scientist and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina’s husband, M Wazed Miah, who died in the afternoon that day. Their embracing of each other was an unprecedented gesture in Bangladeshi politics.
Farida Akhtar, executive director of UBINIG, said the leader of the opposition’s visit to the bereaved and grieving prime minister’s house has given the people a sense of relief and hope as the two top leaders have maintained an antagonistic and even vituperative relationship so far.
‘It seems to us that the Awami League leaders, including Sheikh Hasina, welcomed Khaleda Zia’s visit,’ she said.
Farida said the people accept differences of opinion between the politicians in general and the two major political parties in particular. ‘But they do not want conflict between the two parties,’ she opined.
Mazharul Alam, a research fellow of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, said that because of Dr Wazed’s death both Hasina and Khaleda have built a bridge over what had so far seemed an impassable gap.
‘It is a positive signal which should change the attitude of the leaders and activitists of their parties down to the grassroots levels,’ he said.
Hasina and Khaleda, who have not talked publicly for more than a decade, last exchanged pleasantries and shook hands at the reception on Armed Forces Day at Dhaka Cantonment on November 21 last year.
The two leaders, who were put behind bars by the military-controlled government of Fakhruddin Ahmed and were eventually released after nearly a year in detention, shared their experiences in jail at the reception in Senakunja that day.
They talked in public for the last time in 1995 at the wedding reception of Hasina’s daughter, Saima Wazed Putul, at the Jatiya Sangsad complex.

Courtesy of NewAgebd