IT was a sad day in the history of our parliamentary democracy. It was a day when the sacred (or I is it? Our leaders do not seem to think so) premises of Jatiya Sangsad (National Parliament) once again became the venue of a vicious attack on the ' character of the leader of the opposition. In her deluding speech to the 15th session the Prime 'Sinister broke all norms of decency in castigating , the leader of the largest opposition party inside the | House. In a shameful personal attack Sheikh I Hasina cast aspersion on the character of Begum Zia making unprintable innuendoes in reference

I to an event that happened during the anti-Ershad | movement in 1987.

The Prime Minister, in our view, has insulted ' her office, her person and the parliament in mak-: ing the type of speech that she made. In our view she gave a very poor account of her own level of taste and sensibilities by making remarks about Khaleda Zia's moral character, education and her family background. She lowered further the already abysmally low level of taste and sophistication that is currently seen in our politics. She often boasts of raising Bangladesh’s image abroad. Think what sort of impression the world will get about our taste, our culture and our values when they will read how a sitting Prime Minister speaks in such a denigrating manner about her predecessor.

Will there be no bar in what will be said about political opponents? What sort of values are we giving to our children by reducing our political parlance to this gutter level? We know that Sheikh Hasina does not like Begum Zia. But is this the way to express one’s dislike? When will the PM learn that her feelings about her opponent is not relevant? What is relevant is the fact that Begum Zia leads a party that was elected to run the country for five years in 1991 and got 34 per cent of the votes in 1996, when Sheikh Hasina's party got 37 per cent. She may hate her to the core, but the reality is that she will have to deal with her, just as Khaleda Zia had to deal with Sheikh Hasina when the former was the PM.

We believe that the PM’s speech in the parliament is totally contrary to the spirit of dialogue that she called for on the same occasion. How can you Insult somebody so thoroughly and expect that person to participate in a dialogue? In normal circumstances we would have asked for an apology. But we know that we have lowered ourselves far too much to expect that. The ruling party must understand that if they want any meaningful dialogue with the opposition then they MUST STOP INSULTING THEM. If there is no immediate • nd radical change of AL and Sheikh Hasina’s behaviour then we will know that her calls for a dialogue is not sincere at all.