Welcome, New Year. Do you bring us hope? Hardly. How much lost ground can we recover in the new year — let alone the dire need of breaking new grounds and on numerous fronts? But then these would be new days, throwing us anew along the one-way flow of time. Have we not faltered enough to try to rise in the new year? Hope grows from one’s Juside. We would not live without it. The year ♦hat was was not without a silver-lining or two iri the gathering black clouds of political dis-■aster.

One small young girl sparked the spirit of man and lighted up the entire nation with the glow of her sacrifice. Yasmin Akhter's tale • of torture, rape and murder and subsequent .police cover-up is not uncomihon in Bangladesh. What canonized her as a little St joan was the heroic rise of the people of ' Dinajpur. And the Yasmin movement that , rocked Dinajpur confirmed to all In the nation ‘that we are not all finished yet. that the : moral man lives in us and courage has not forsaken us altogether. Yasmin did lend to

I the nation a wonderful modicum of • confidence it was badly in need of.

; On December 16 Bangladesh entered its 125th year of independence. There was in the iair some brilliance as the day approached.

■ After many long years, suddenly the ambience ■whispered to each eager ear how good it was to be free — however may we be buffeted by • evil days. To be free is a virtue by Itself — and • why were we oblivious of it so long?

, That elan unebbing, we enter the new year. , It will bring us an election. Whatever the ar-; rangements they come to — people are now ' much more vigilant than before. If some quarter proves foolish enough to- spill blood —

‘ it will not get its way. And in the new year the nation must go back to work — to work double i shift if need be. There is still something left ■ of the momentum created both in agriculture ‘ abd industry in recent years. The new year , must add pace to it before it slackens.

On to then a year of work without break, ; competition without subterfuges, politics with ‘ a lot of responsibility, and cooperation and a ‘ true feeling for the people.

A happy New Year for all!