IT seems the ruling party and the opposition are in a contest to surpass each other in political toughness. Never mind the people's sufferance and the economy's nose-dive! Apparently it was regarded as 'provocative' by opposition leader Begum Zia when prime minister Sheikh Hasi la had made a fresh offer for talks to the former with the caveat that this time she ought to 'specify her demands' and not be mercurial with them. Khaleda Zia in a sharp reaction to the offer rot merely rejected it out of hand but caustically suggested that If an official overture is made for a dialogue she would be only prepared to discuss the modality for the government's abdication of power.

Thereafter, two unsettling developments took place on Friday last. BNP chief Begum Zia chaired a meeting of the secretaries general of her party, Jatlya Party, Jamaat-e-Islami and Islamic Olkya Jote to mark a departure from 'issue-based agitation to one-point movement aimed at AL government s downfall at the shortest possible time to facilitate holding of national elections ahead of schedule.' At the next stage the chiefs of alliance partners are likely to meet in a bld to precipitate the government's exit.

At the other pole, the 67-member Awaml League Central Working Committee (ALCWC) tn a meeting at Gonobhaban chaired by the Prime Minister decided that no more offer for dialogue will be made to the opposition unless they have withdrawn their one-point demand.

Obviously, the government cannot discuss its own ouster so that its reaction is understandable. Even so we would implore it to create an atmosphere for talks by means of suitable confidence-building overtures to the opposition. The memories of double standards practised in term of allowing anti-hartal processions while forbidding pro-hartal processions during a general strike call and arrests made of opposition activists and cases allegedly started against many of them need to be erased by a transformed behaviour pattern from the ruling party. And during the secretariat siege programme of the opposition, newspapers reported about obstructionism engineered by ruling party supporters at all highway entry points to Dhaka city. Let there be no repetition of this.

That said, we turn to the opposition to say, ' Please pay heed to our one-point advice: elected government cannot be made to fall except through elections." This was proved in 1996 and this will be proved again, despite AL's one point demand then and the BNP-led opposition's one-point demand now. Democracy is all about the sovereignty of the ballot and no political party can ever arrogate that supremacy of popular will to itself.

We fervently appeal to the ruling party and the opposition to pull back from this extreme political posturings so that there can be some kind of an opening for the talks to take place. The ' Price of their failure to do so is bound to be unpayably high In terms of economic peril and I political destabilisation. They must act before it is | too late.