Leaders of major political parties are eyeing maximum utilisation of the Durga Puja and Eid-ul-Azha holidays for mass communication in their constituencies ahead of the next parliamentary elections.
Leaders of the ruling Awami League are aiming to persuade voters to ensure their support in the polls while leaders of the main opposition BNP work on mobilising public support in favour of their demand for a non-partisan interim government to oversee the election.
The political leaders believe that this will be the only long vacation before the elections, which have to be held between October 27 and January 24 next year as per the constitution.
A number of ruling party leaders told the Dhaka Tribune that most of their lawmakers and senior leaders had moved to their constituencies following directives from the high-ups as they considered the next election very important.
Taking the holidays as the last chance to gain public support for their demand, the BNP high command, on the other hand, has asked party leaders to go to their constituencies to launch campaigns and drum up enthusiasm about their post-Eid non-stop agitation programmes.
“We want to share the happiness of Puja and Eid with people. At the same time, we will conveythe message that the next election is very important for the existence of the country,” said Hasan Mahmud, publicity secretary of the Awami League.
“We will tell people what the situation would be if the opposition forces came to power and what it would be like if the pro-liberation forces came. We will present a broad picture, portraying the government’s development work done in the past five years,” Hasan Mahmud, also the environment and forests minister, told the Dhaka Tribune on Sunday.
Meanwhile, a number of senior BNP leaders said the central leaders had already started campaigning in their constituencies.
“Apart from exchanging greetings, we will discuss justification of the upcoming agitation programmes to force the government to restore the non-party caretaker system for fair polls,” Organising Secretary Fazlul Haque Milon told the Dhaka Tribune.
Awami League’s Organising Secretary Khalid Mahmud Chowdhurysaid any social or religious gathering or festival, such as this Puja and Eid vacation, was very important to a political leader as it gavehim/her a huge opportunity to meet a large number of people.
The BNP leaders believe that it is not possible to isolate the capital from the rest of the country and paralyse it without the participation of the grassroots.
Syed Emran Saleh Prince, assistant publicity secretary of the BNP, said the high-ups had verbally asked the leaders and activists to launch campaignson the caretaker issue during the Puja and Eid holidays.
“We are urging people to take part in our ongoing movement. We talk about the caretaker issue at the cattle markets or while exchanging Puja greetings,” he told the Dhaka Tribune on Sunday.
