Senior BNP leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has drawn widespread criticism, especially on social media, after saying the people of this country were better off under Pakistan’s military regime, both financially and in terms of quality of life.
Bangladesh had gone to war against Pakistan as the military regime had stripped the countrymen of their rights, but the situation was worse now, he told reporters in Thakurgaon on Thursday.
There were only 22 multimillionaires back then compared to 192,000 right now, the BNP secretary general said. The gulf between the rich and the poor had increased and the low-income people were suffering immensely, he added.
Fakhrul said the government had destroyed press freedom in the country. “Killing and persecution of journalists have become regular. That is why no one wants to speak up.”
His comments on Pakistan were greeted with derision on social media.
Shah Ali Farhad, former special assistant to the prime minister, said in a Facebook post that it was impossible to send Fakhrul back to the Pakistan era with a time machine, but he would help the BNP leader buy a one-way air ticket to Islamabad.
Another Facebook user, Nurul Azim Rony, said the air of independent Bangladesh would obviously seem poisonous to the son of infamous war criminal Mirza Ruhul Amin.
Our Thakurgaon correspondent Zakir Mostafiz Milu contributed to this report