THE reports that Bangladesh Nationalist Party鈥檚 student and youth wings have started grabbing local Awami League party offices after the fall of the authoritarian Awami League regime on August 5 are worrying. As AL activists are on the run to avoid backlash, many of their local offices have been either burnt or grabbed by Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and Juba Dal. A photograph that 抖阴精品 published on August 11 shows a Jatiyatabadi Samajik Sangskritik Sangstha banner hung on the wall of a building at Segunbaghicha in Dhaka that housed an Awami League office. The Chhatra League鈥檚 Mohammadpur unit office is reported to have been grabbed by the BNP鈥檚 student wing. Most of AL local offices, as the party鈥檚 Sylhet division says, are either vandalised or burnt. A senior BNP leader, however, says that some people are doing such jobs in the name of the party and the party has already suspended about 20 leaders and activists over allegations. The admission and action on part of the BNP leadership are not enough.
What is needed is a clear departure from the political culture that relies on extortion and control of public places. In the past decade, the Awami League had established its party offices illegally on public spaces and even private property. For a while, a large聽corner of the Siddheshwari Boys鈥� School playground in Dhaka was occupied by the Awami Juba League for its office. Many parks and playgrounds are also similarly occupied. The party offices are also often used, as widely reported, to manage extortion economy. Some councillors as well as local Awami League leaders are reported on a number of occasions to have been actively collecting toll from hawkers and rickshaw-pullers. Each hawker had to pay Tk 50鈥�500 in extortion money to 鈥榙esignated linesman鈥� who shared it with the police, party leaders and city officials. In what follows, the incidents of vandalism, arson attacks and the reoccupation of illegally built AL offices hint at an inclination towards a political culture built on extortion and coercion.
The Student against Discrimination causing the fall of the authoritarian Awami League regime is a result of students and people鈥檚 growing disappointment about the ideologically and financially corrupt mainstream political culture marked with violence, extortion and encroachment. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or any other political parties for that matter, must show their ideological distance from the legacy of occupation, extortion and coercive politics. The government should take immediate steps to pull down these political establishments and take action against all involved in the reported vandalism, arson attack and occupation. More importantly, the government must develop a strategy to dismantle the extortion economy that revolved around such party offices in the past.