DHAKA, 4 November 2006 — The main opposition Awami League yesterday extended its deadline by a week for the interim government to purge top officials or face renewed street protests.
“We have given you seven days during which we want to see that you implement all our 11 demands. We want to see that you have taken all the effective measures to hold free and fair elections,” said party leader Hasina Wajed, addressing the head of the country’s caretaker government at a rally attended by some 100,000 supporters.
“We want to see that you (the caretaker government) have taken all the effective measures to hold free and fair elections,” she said. “If you fail to implement the people’s demands within this deadline we will resume non-stop transport blockades and protests all over the country from Nov. 12,” she added. Criticizing the president for taking over as the caretaker chief, she called for appointing a new interim head to ensure smooth and transparent polls.
Earlier in the day, Awami League Secretary-General Abdul Jalil told AFP, “We want to see meaningful changes. We want neutral men for the top bureaucratic positions against whom there are no allegations of bias in favor of the outgoing government. But what the government is doing is replacing tainted officials with other tainted officials.” The opposition says national polls in January, which the interim government is tasked with organizing, will be biased in favor of the outgoing administration unless key officials are removed.
The Awami League and its allies have threatened to resume mass street protests if their demands — including the sacking of the chief election commissioner and his two deputies — are not met.
The death toll from the unrest rose to 24 after an activist of Jamaat-e-Islami, the outgoing government’s biggest coalition partner, died late Thursday. He had been beaten by Awami League activists last Friday in the capital, police said. Violent clashes claimed two dozen lives and left more than 2,000 injured as thousands of people took to the streets after the previous government’s term expired a week ago. The caretaker body late Thursday removed a number of top officials including the national police chief.
The chief editor of the state-run BSS news agency was sacked and administrators in each of the country’s six regions were also removed. “There will be more big changes today,” said A.F.M. Solaiman Chowdhury, secretary of the Establishment Ministry which oversees civil service appointments. The caretaker government also said it would reform the election commission, according to Jalil.
“The council of advisers told us proper steps have been taken to reconstitute the election commission,” he said, referring to the de facto interim Cabinet.
However, it was not known whether it would bow to the opposition’s demand to remove Chief Election Commissioner M.A. Aziz and revise the electoral list.
The Awami League has accused the commission under Aziz’s stewardship of producing a list with more than 10 million fake voters while leaving off many of its own supporters. Aziz told reporters on Thursday that he would consider stepping down if asked by the caretaker administration.
Officials Thursday pleaded for more time to make reforms. “We need space and time to resolve the issues,” said Akbar Ali Khan, one of the members of the interim government’s 10-member advisory council. Polls are scheduled for January after the five-year term of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led coalition government expired a week ago.
The country was rocked by four days of deadly violence with battles between police and supporters of opposition parties that turned central Dhaka into a battlefield.
The protests led to the government’s original choice to head the caretaker administration, an ex-Supreme Court judge who was a BNP-appointed government official during the late 1970s, refusing the post.
Former military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad, meanwhile, yesterday confirmed he would join a political alliance headed by ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia. “We have decided to join the alliance with her,” Ershad said after a meeting of his Jatiya Party.
