THE death of three drivers ... in arson attacks during the 48-hour countrywide hartal ...

enforced by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami on Sept 18 and 19 ... points to a dangerous trend that has marked national politics in recent years.

What`s worse, setting ablaze buses, trucks and private cars, even when there arepeople inside, seems to have become an increasingly preferred scare tactic before and during hartals.While Jamaat-Shibir activists may have taken the tactic to an alarming level since February ... the pernicious practice has been neither their invention nor their exclusive domain.

The major opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party has done it, so has the ruling Awami League when it was in opposition. In fact, the arson attack on a Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation bus in June 2004 on the eve of a hartal called by the Awami League ... remains the deadliest of such attacks inBangladesh`s history; 11 persons, including children, were burnt alive. It thus sounds hypocritical when ... the ALled government, including the prime minister, wax eloquent when castigating their political opponents for such violent attacks. ...

Duplicity may not, however, be the only transgression that the incumbents areguilty of. ... In most cases, such violence is triggered by apparently unprovoked and decidedly disproportionateuse of force against pickets, by members of the police and other law enforcement agencies or activists of the ruling party. ... That said ... no amount of provocation justifies such murderous acts. ...

Moreover, while even the party ideologically most incongruous to the seculardemocratic spirit that the People`s Republic of Bangladesh upholds has the democratic right to call and observe a hartal, no one has the right to enforce such a programme through violence and vandalism. ...(Sept 24) =