Opinion December 12, 1983, Forty Years Ago: Impasse with Akalis

Bangladesh military ruler Lt-Gen H M Ershad assumed the office of the President replacing A F M Ahsanuddin Chowdhury whom he appointed last year after the elected president Abdus Sattar was overthrown by him in a coup. Gen Ershad took upon himself the responsibility of the President through a martial law decree, issued by himself. He also retained the portfolio of the chief martial law administrator and the chief of army staff.

Walesa For Peace

Vowing that solidarity will not be crushed, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa appealed to the Polish government to let his union help in solving Poland’s problems. A government-solidarity dialogue “is possible, and we have the right to it,” Walesa said in his Nobel lecture, read for him in Polish by Bogdan Cywinski, the outlawed labour federation’s leader outside Poland. Cywinski represented Walesa because he feared the government would not let him return if he left Poland to collect his prize.

Dialogue in Sri Lanka

The Tamil United Liberation Front in Sri Lanka will be invited to the proposed all-party conference to resolve the island’s ethnic problem. A consensus to this effect has been reached in the meetings that leaders of different political parties had with President J R Jayewardene. They also agreed on the need to find a political solution to the problem.