Dismissed posts, telecommunication and IT minister and terminated Awami League presidium member Abdul Latif Siddique said yesterday that he wanted to come back to Bangladesh but was waiting for the party’s decision.
In an interview with the BBC on Monday evening, Latif, who is now in Kolkata, India, said he wanted to stay in India until he returned.
Here are the highlights of that interview.
BBC: What is your reaction to the decision to dismiss you from the government and the party?
Latif: My reaction is positive. Because I belong to a party. It has its own disciplines and regulations. My leader thought I breached the disciplines and regulations. That was why the leader made a decision as the party’s highest forum. So, there is no reason to give negative reaction to that. This party made me a minister...Now if she or her colleagues think that I do not qualify anymore, then that is not a crime in majority democracy.
BBC: Do you think that you have been done injustice to?
Latif: No, no. Rather I repent for embarrassing my party and my leader.
BBC: Do you repent anything else?
Latif: No. I do not repent anything else. I embarrassed my leader. She relied on me; I hurt her feelings.
BBC: But do you repent anything you said?
Latif: Let me say it again...I have a little penance that there is not a single journalist or a human being in this world who mentioned that I had told those things during a chitchat; not in a meeting, or a forum, or in front of a microphone. Without knowing whatever I said in that chitchat – not knowing the entire speech – depending on a partial presentation that could be distorted, irrelevant...Nobody wanted to have the full version...I take full responsibility for my words. I spoke for one and a half hours. Find out the tape of that 1.5-hour speech. I take all the responsibility for that. If I am sentenced to death for that, I will accept it.
BBC: Considering the situation, what will now be you next step? Are you coming back to the country?
Latif: I am interested in coming back home. Because I have worked for the independence of this country. I have worked for the development of this country. But the context is such now that I do not know what to do. Because I am not sure whether my return will embarrass my leader. I am in a psychological crisis. I will enter the country on first chance. Then I will face the situation.
BBC: Have you tried to contact the leader of the party?
Latif: You mean Sheikh Hasina? No I have not.
BBC: So you want them to tell you to come back?
Latif: No, I do not want that. They will decide what they will do.
BBC: If you cannot go back to the country in near future, if your party gives you a signal for not returning...You are still an MP. Have you decided where you will stay?
Latif: No no.
BBC: Will you stay in India?
Latif: I cannot live in Europe-America. That is why I have come to Kolkata. I want to live close to the soil. I love the wet smell of soil...I am a very normal human being brother.
BBC: Will you be able to stay in India? Any gesture from the Indian government...
Latif: If India does not allow me...If that is right now...I will not say anything about that. Time will tell in the future. Time will make the decision. I will not say anything right now.
