After a day’s pause, the BNP-led 18-party alliance enforces its 83-hour nationwide road-rail-waterway blockade at 6am on Saturday, demanding arrangement of the 10th general election under a non-party caretaker government. The fresh spell of blockade, the fifth of its kind, which will continue till 5pm on Tuesday, is also meant for forcing the government to cancel the January-5 ‘farcical’ election. BNP standing committee member Nazrul Islam Khan announced the programme at a press conference at BNP chairperson’s Gulshan office on Thursday. Like four other spells, the blockade programme will not be extended this time as it was chalked out until 5pm on Tuesday considering the Christian community’s Christmas Day on December 25 (Wednesday). Meanwhile, all the vehicles of the United Nations and the Health Department to be engaged in National Immunisation programme on Saturday will remain out of purview of the blockade. Besides, media vehicles, ambulances, vehicles of fire brigade and dead body-carrying vehicles will also remain out of ambit of the blocked programme. Meanwhile, the 18-party’s countrywide 72-hour road-rail-waterway blockade beginning from 6am on Tuesday ended at 6:00am on Friday amid violent incidents like clashes and arsons on vehicles and crude bomb explosions, killing at least two people dead. There had been incidents of violence, including vandalising and torching of vehicles, clashes between blockaders and police and ruling party men, arrest of opposition leaders and activists and crude bomb blasts across the country. The country’s railway was affected during the fourth spell of the blockade as previous times due to removal of fishplates from tracks in different places. Capital Dhaka remained almost disconnected with the rest of the country as no long-route buses left or entered the city during the blockade. Rickshaws and auto-rickshaws dominated the city streets during the period, causing immense sufferings to commuters, especially the office-goers. Huge law enforcers remained deployed on the city streets to avoid any untoward incident. The opposition alliance has been on nonstop agitation programmes since the Election Commission announced the election schedule on November 25 fixing the balloting date for January 5. The 18-party has already enforced 418 hours of road-rail-waterway blockade across the country in four spells –71-hour, 131-hour, 144-hour and 72-hour ones– after the announcement of the election schedule, that left at least 78 people dead. – UNB
