The BNP-led 20-party alliance’s announcement of countrywide 72-hour shutdown from tomorrow along with the ongoing blockade has put the Secondary School Certificate examinations in a great peril.
BNP leaders have said they would not backtrack from the movement as they are not responsible for the ongoing crisis. The government should step down from office to put an end to the prevailing political stalemate, they say.
Party insiders told the Dhaka Tribune hartal (shutdown) along with the blockade will be enforced on a regular basis until the problem is solved.
Issuing a press statement at 2:40pm yesterday, BNP Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi asked the government to stand down to pave the way for bringing back normalcy to the country.
“Peace and stability can be restored only after the illegal government resigns,” Rizvi said, replying to the call of Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid to withdraw the blockade during the SSC examinations.
Around 1.5 million students will sit for the examinations this year.
On January 28, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid told journalists that the upcoming Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations would be held throughout the country in due time and warned that no conspiracy could stop the SSC and equivalent exams.
“We can expect minimum norms and values from the BNP-led 20-party alliance leaders,” Nahid said.
But Nahid yesterday softened his stance after the hartal call. He said his ministry was yet to decide whether the SSC and equivalent exams would be rescheduled.
“We still believe that human values will prevail and the BNP-led 20-party alliance will take the exams into consideration and postpone or call off their shutdown,” he said.
Earlier, Education Ministry sources said the government decided to hold the exams amid blockade but exam dates coinciding with hartal would be rescheduled.
Guardians of examinees are panic-stricken due to the blockade violence, he added.
Rizvi, on the other hand, said: “The Awami League government is the root of people’s sufferings. They bagged only 5% votes. If the illegal government resigns from the office then peace and stability will return to the country.”
Meanwhile at 5:25pm, Rizvi in another press release on behalf of the 20-party alliance announced a 72-hour nationwide hartal from February 01 protesting killing of at least 21 opposition men and filing cases against more than 150,000 leaders and activists.
The nationwide strike will be enforced from 6am tomorrow and will continue till 6am of February 04, he said, adding that the strike was called protesting the threat of arresting BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia.
Earlier, the O- and A-level examinations were cancelled due to the opposition combine’s 48-hour shutdown in Dhaka division.
Though the BNP-led alliance had kept O-level exams out of hartal’s purview, this time they did not do so; they rather alleged that the solution would come only through resignation of the government.
“The problem is political. It is neither an academic nor an administrative problem, so the problem should be settled politically and only the government can do this,” Serajul Islam Chowdhury, eminent educationist, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
He said academic life has remained almost suspended along with economic and other issues. So normal situation has to be created as exam is not only about students or the examinees rather many other stakeholders are involved with the issue.
Mamtaz Begum, mother of a student who will sit for the SSC exams this year, said: “We are really concerned as we could not understand what to do. Should we risk our child’s life during the exams?
“How will the government ensure safety and security of the students? What will the opposition gain disrupting the education life of our children? Things should be made clear soon for the sake of the future generation.”
The BNP-led 20-party alliance called countrywide transport blockade since January 5 and countrywide hartal has been enforced intermittently amid blockade to intensify the movement.
A senior BNP leader said the Awami League did the same thing: it enforced hartal during public exams when it was in the opposition.
In 2013 also, the BNP-Jamaat-led combine enforced hartals and staged protests during the SSC and Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exams.
