BNP has seen the recent tour of Awami League leaders to India as a ploy to “seek the support of New Delhi in holding another lopsided election to cling to power.”
Speaking at a press conference at the party's Nayapaltan headquarters on Thursday, BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi also said Awami League Joint General Secretary Mahbubul Alam Hanif's comments that their party would rule the country as long as long Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina is alive has exposed the government's real “autocratic” nature.
"Did you [Awami League leaders] go to India with a big team for a negotiation to stay in power? As the government has come to know that Awami League won't get more than 20 to 22 seats if the election is conducted in a free and fair manner, they're now making frantic efforts for holding a one-sided election with interference of external powers, like in January 2014," he said.
The top BNP leader warned that people would not give the ruling party any scope this time to cling to power by holding a “farcical, stage-managed” election.
On April 22, a 19-member Awami League delegation, led by its general secretary Obaidul Quader, went to India on a three-day visit.
Upon returning home, Hanif said on Wednesday that “as long as Hasina is alive and able to work, she will remain the prime minister and Awami league will be there in power."
Rizvi said such comments by a ruling party leader also revealed the government's “dangerous master plan” to push the country towards a civil war.
"His comment carries an indication that the government has a plan to restore the one-party Baksal rule by exiling democracy forever."
Rizvi reiterated his party’s demand for ensuring better treatment of their “ailing” chairperson, Khaleda Zia, at United Hospital by her personal physicians.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam has raised an absurd question about BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman's Bangladeshi citizenship only to divert people's attention from the prevailing issues, including Khaleda's imprisonment, he alleged.
“Tarique Rahman submitted his passport to the British Home Office only for getting political asylum there. He didn't surrender his passport to the Bangladesh mission in London, but the government is peddling falsehoods regarding the matter.”
The BNP Standing Committee member asked the prime minister whether she had given up her Bangladeshi citizenship during her stay in India after the assassination her father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in 1975.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
