DHAKA: The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has accused the country’s caretaker government of still pursuing the “minus two formula” by keeping their leader Khaleda Zia and Awami League President Hasina Wajed out of the political arena with polls just two months away.
The party added that the government should withdraw the graft charges against the BNP chairperson to create an atmosphere conducive to holding elections.
“The BNP will not participate in any election without Khaleda Zia, and even those BNP members who took a reformist stance will not go to the hustings without her,” BNP Joint Secretary-General Gayeshwar Chandra Roy said.
Roy’s statement comes after the Anti-Corruption Commission last Wednesday approved the charge sheet against Khaleda and 15 others, many of them ministers in her government (2001-06), in a case that alleges irregularities and corruption in awarding the Barapukuria coalmine to a Chinese company.
Another court Sunday directed the military-backed government of Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed not to arrest Hasina against whom the ACC has been pressing charges. Abroad for medical treatment, Hasina is on parole that ended yesterday.
Analysts say the government is using the charges, which the two former prime ministers reject as “political”, and the court cases as part of the carrot and stick policy to get them to fall in line with the plans to hold elections under the national emergency.
Parliamentary elections, which were called off in January last year, are now set to be held Dec. 18, but the political parties want the emergency lifted before the polls.
Meanwhile, a leading nongovernmental organization in Bangladesh said yesterday it is launching a new political party with a mission to restore democracy and reduce poverty.
Proshika, which boasts of being Bangladesh’s biggest NGO, will formally launch the new party, the United Citizens Movement (UCM), later this week, Proshika Chairman Qazi Faruque Ahmed told reporters yesterday. “Poor laborers, professionals, women and freedom fighters are the blood and basic strength of our new political platform,” he said. “The principal aims of the UCM will be to fight for the rights of the poor, reduce poverty, assert basic rights and to restore democratic rule.”
Faruque’s attempt to use an NGO to launch a political party follows a similar but failed attempt to do so last year by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, head of the Grameen Bank, the country’s top micro-credit agency. Faruque said UCM would formally register with the Election Commission as a political party and contest the elections.
