Gono Forum, the party that expelled one of its leaders, Sultan Mohammad Mansur for taking oath as a Member of Parliament in defiance of party decision, has not yet decided about seeking the House Speaker’s intervention in emptying Sultan’s seat in the parliament for breaching party line.
Hours after his taking oath Gono Forum expelled him on Thursday and the party’s General Secretary Mosfata Mohsin Montu told Dhaka Tribune the same evening that they would arrive to a decision over the matter on Monday after holding couple of meetings on Saturday and Monday.
Whether the expelled leader of Gono Forum, Sultan Mohammad Mansur, would continue his parliament membership in 11th parliament or not without any complexity would now largely depend on what decision comes on Monday.
Montu said, a Gono Forum meeting would be held on Saturday afternoon to take party decision and following that another meeting would be held on Monday with Okkya Front leaders to decide about their further action on Sultan.
“After that meeting we would be able to say what we are going to do,” Montu said.
If the party take further action after expelling Mansur, it would be an incident first of its kind in the country where a party appeal to the Speaker for emptying a seat in the parliament using Article 70 of the Constitution.
Earlier, a similar attempt was made by then ruling party Awami League in July, 2015 following a ‘derogatory comment’ made by Tangail-4 lawmaker Abdul Latif Siddique in September, 2014.
AL sent a letter requesting the Speaker of the Parliament to announce vacant the seat citing that the member concerned had breached Article 70. The then Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury sought the EC's opinion over legality of Latif's parliamentary membership.
However, Latif Siddique resigned from the parliamentary membership during a hearing over a dispute centring the membership at EC's Secretariat making Article 67(2) to come into effect instead of Article 70.
Although Gono Forum is saying that they would go for further action, if any, following the decision taken at the meeting of Okkya Front meeting, EC said there is no existence of Okkya Front in the gazette.
So, Gono Forum would be the party who is authorized to take any decision.
“EC has nothing to do after publishing gazette. It's Gono Forum who could take any stand as the candidate participated under its banner,” said Election Commissioner Md Rafiqul Islam.
The decision would be taken from the parliament. Besides, there are several legal issues as well that needed to be considered to complete the complex process, he added.
