The BNP is planning to take advantage of the situation following October 25 when, it believes, the government will have less control on the civil and police administration to go for tough programmes, such as non-stop hartal and blockades.
Based on their experience in 1996 and 2006, when the party stepped down from office, a number of leaders said they had arranged the administration to get advantage in the subsequent polls, but it had not worked out as per their expectations.
The main opposition party is now planning to “paralyse” the capital if the government does not pay heed to its latest ultimatum for holding the next parliamentary polls under a non-partisan interim government.
The opposition leaders said they wanted to “cash” in on the people’s sentiment.
BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia has repeatedly urged the civil and police administration recently not to carry out the government’s “illegal and illogical” orders.
The BNP will wait until October 25 as Khaleda will be addressing rallies in Khulna, Sylhet, Chittagong and Dhaka. It is also against waging any tough movement before that time as two major festivals – Eid-ul-Azha and Durga Puja will be observed between October 11 and 20.
“We have given the government time to accept our demand. If it does not meet the demand, we can tell the people that we do not have any other option except waging a movement,” Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain, a member of the party’s Standing Committee, told the Dhaka Tribune on Friday.
“People will also support us because we had not gone for hartal or blockade since Eid-ul-Fitr although we had announced so.”
He said: “We will announce tough programmes, including hartal, blockades and sit-ins, after October 25.”
The party had given the government three ultimatums for realising its demand.
Latest, at a rally in Rajshahi on September 16, Khaleda Zia gave a fresh ultimatum, asking the government to pass a bill on non-partisan interim government in parliament by October 25.
The leader of the opposition also urged her followers in Rajshahi and Rangpur to come to Dhaka to join the movement whenever she asked them.
At a public meeting in Narsingdi on September 8, she warned of enforcing nonstop hartal and blockades of roads and railways across the country if the demand was not met.
“We know how to carry out a movement. If the non-party administration is not restored, people will block all roads and railways, and sit there.”
The party leaders are now thinking that if the Election Commission announces polls schedule without resolving the issue of polls-time government, the ongoing movement will turn one-sided.
They believe that public opinion is in their favour; the diplomats want an inclusive election, which also favours them, and all this will benefit the opposition camp.
“Madam [Khaleda] has already said what the party’s next course of action will be. Wait and see how we implement our movement strategy,” Goyeshwar Chandra Roy, a Standing Committee member, told the Dhaka Tribune on Friday.
On the first day of the ongoing session of parliament, Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury said the session will run until October 24. To meet the opposition’s demand there is no alternative to amending the constitution by then.
As part of its ongoing mass contact programme to drum up public support for the demand, the BNP will hold a mass rally at the end of October in the capital. Announcements of non-stop hartal and sit-in programmes might come from that rally.