There is no room for compromise here. The government must stay firm in dealing with those who have initiated the countrywide transport strike. Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind about why these transport workers who have taken the people of the country hostage through their strike must not be indulged in any form whatsoever. Nothing that is mob rule or approaches mob rule should be looked upon with sympathy or fear.
And what the transport workers have done by shutting down the movement of public vehicles across the country is not only immoral and indecent but illegal as well. It is illegal because these people who have called the strike are in clear contempt of court. They have demonstrated brazen behavior through their open resistance to the law only because the court has rightfully decided to take drivers to task over their reckless driving on the roads and highways of the country. First it was Khulna. Today it is an entire country which reels in the rule of the mob, for these transport workers are a mob that cares for no law and no life other than its own. This mob, or more appropriately a mafia which has developed the notion that it can bring a whole government to its knees through putting commuters in jeopardy, must not be allowed to emerge triumphant in its nefarious objectives.
The facts speak for the citizen and for the law. The safety of people on the roads, a guarantee of safe driving for all and, above all, abiding and deep respect for the rules of the road are the principles which have been upheld by the judicial judgments on those drivers whose careless and insensitive driving have killed citizens. These principles must not now be undermined by any genuflection on the part of the authorities before the men who have sought to make a mockery of the law in the belief that the government will cave in to their pressure.
The transport workers could have allowed the law to prevail. They could have gone for measures toward filing appeals on the verdicts delivered. They did not do that. What they did was reprehensible. They took a nation hostage and did not stop to think of the sufferings they were putting people to --- patients, the elderly, students, workers and employees, indeed everybody. Taking hostages is an unacceptable proposition because it is a gross violation of the law. By defying the law, law that is symbolized by judicial judgement, the transport workers have challenged the authority of the state.
This challenge must be met with firmness on the part of the authorities. It must be defeated through adequate and firm public resistance, through a demonstration of steel by the government, through unwavering support for such firmness on the part of citizens. The transport workers mean to intimidate citizens into surrender and compelling them thus to ask the authorities to go for a compromise. They must not be allowed to succeed.
It is time to act tough. The courts have been tough and must stay tough. The government must adopt a rock-like position on the strikers, through seeing their dark plan come apart. This strike is illegal as well as illogical. With deaths from road accidents going up perceptibly in the country and drivers' arrogance expanding exponentially, it is time for action that is purposeful and tough and irreversible on the part of the government and citizens.
We reiterate our position once again. Those who have called this illegal, illogical and contemptible strike must not be allowed to succeed in their sinister objectives. Let the strike collapse from within. And then let the law deal in an exemplary way with the men behind this misdeed.
