JUST when Home Minister Mohammad Nasim appears to be on a roll to apply the law in a ncn-' partisan way he finds himself up against stiff opposition, in certain pockets, from party loyalists. The resistance is taking a violent, rowdy form as is evidenced by three recent incidents where AL activists went berserk over arrests of charge-sheeted party MPs or accused criminal elements. Most of the protestations seemed locally engineered and orchestrated to bamboozle the authorities into thinking that the arrested persons enjoyed localised support and therefore deserved some kind of immunity from further proceedings.

Take the case of two MPs, Messrs Afzal Khan from Comilla and Mahbubur Rahman from Sunamganj. The first one. arrested on charge of embezzling Tk 8 crore worth of bank money and accused in the Shanker Kumar Das murder case, has been set on bail. Even then, while he spoke from outside the Comilla jail gate his parliamentary colleague Mahbubur Rahman who was arrested on charge of bomb blast at his Chhatak residence spoke from inside the jail compound, both to a gathering of party supporters. Earlier, Afzal loyalists had put up barricade on Dhaka-Chittagong Highway to disrupt communication there. In the second incident, a mob led by local AL leaders gheraoed Ramna thana following the arrest of wanted criminal Julhash from Nayatola in the city. The third instance that we would like to cite shows that Jubo League and Chhatra League supporters in Khulna bombed some policemen and snatched Kala Khokon from their custody. He was an accused in several criminal cases. Traffic on Khulna-Jessore highway came to a standstill as clashes took place between agitated activists and the police.

We condemn these incidents and urge the home minister to sit up and take note of the rowdyism fuelled among party, supporters by quarters within the AL affected by the law enforcement initiative of the government. We want an official denunciation of the act of sabotage with a statement from the ruling party to the effect that they have cut off their relations with such people. It is imperative for them also to put a message across that they are determined to carry forward their enforcement agenda undeterred come what may. If they failed to do all these, then wrong signal would go out to people in charge of enforcing the laws forcing them back into their shell of passivity, and at best, hesitancy to act. The home ministry clearly faces the biggest challenge to government credibility to-date.