Cabinet yesterday said new laws were not needed to tackle the country's political crisis, saying existing laws, appropriately employed, were sufficient.
Cabinet members reached this conclusion following talks in a cabinet meeting about the BNP-led alliance blockade and hartal programmes, a minister, who attended the meeting presided over by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, told the Dhaka Tribune.
Several cabinet colleagues had suggested the enactment of strong new laws to deal with the political violence but the law minister ruled out the idea, the cabinet source said.
The prime minister supported the law minister's position that terrorists should be brought to justice within context of existing laws, according to the cabinet source.
The law minister said the ongoing violence would gradually be stabilised under existing anti-terrorism and security legislation, according to the source.
Cabinet members observed that the BNP's blockade and hartals had resulted in incidents of mob violence and that the 20-party combine was steadily losing popularity, the source told the Dhaka Tribune.
Ministers also discussed the round table meeting of Nagorik Oikya Prokriya – a citizen's initiative to get the ruling AL and BNP to hold talks to get past the political deadlock – at the cabinet meeting but the prime minister did not comment on the matter, the source said.
On Sunday, Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu strongly opposed the Nagorik Oikya Prokriya plan.
The finance minister, AMA Muhith, said he had been misquoted by the media over the alleged disruption of business in the districts, the source said.
Several top-level leaders strongly denied that inter-district communication had been badly affected by the transport blockade.
On Saturday several papers prominently published statements attributed to the finance minister about the dysfunction of business in districts far away from the capital.