While happy about the low voter turnout in yesterday’s elections, the BNP-led 18-party alliance is also charged with a new spirit to wage a movement to compel the government to give in to its demand for fresh polls under a non-partisan interim government.
“The farcical election will not get the international recognition. People of the country witnessed how the ruling party rigged votes. This will create a new dimension in our movement,” a senior leader of the BNP told the Dhaka Tribune last night requesting anonymity.
The leader also said the party had to be cautious about the movement and “there is no scope to make any mistakes in the next course of action.”
Demanding cancellation of the “farcical” polls, the opposition alliance yesterday called another 48-hour countrywide shutdown from 6am today, the moment its two-day shutdown demanding cancellation of the 10th general elections ends.
“We urge the people to observe the hartal demanding cancellation of farcical polls and protesting the killing of opposition leaders and activists on the election day. The indefinite blockade programme will continue at the same time,” BNP Chairperson’s Adviser Osman Faruk said at a press conference at his residence two hours after the voting ended.
He claimed that the people had spontaneously boycotted the “one-party polls” and that 21 opposition leaders and activists were killed yesterday.
The opposition alliance boycotted the polls and also urged the people to boycott and resist it.
Acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said Awami League leader Tofail Ahmed’s claim that people had exercised their franchise ignoring the opposition’s call for boycott had been “nothing but a shameless falsehood.”
“The people have witnessed the election circus through the mass media,” he said in a statement, adding: “The government has no moral right to stay in power anymore as its blueprint election is foiled. Now the people only want a free, neutral and acceptable election under a non-partisan government.”
Earlier he had claimed that the “empty” polling centres were proof that the people had rejected the 10th parliamentary polls.
He thanked party supporters for participating in the hartal, enforced Saturday and yesterday, and asked them to continue with the blockade programme in a peaceful manner.
Criticisng the law enforcers’ role, he Fakhrul the new government would be completely illegal.”