BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia will visit Ganabhaban, responding to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s dinner invitation to talk about holding a dialogue on the polls-time government, after October 29, senior leaders said.
They said the ruling Awami League’s general secretary and the opposition BNP’s acting secretary general might have talks to finalise the date and time for the dinner. Even the officials of the two parties might discuss the matter.
If the government wanted, the BNP chief herself might call the PM, a number of leaders said.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune on Sunday, a senior leader claimed that an official of the prime minister had phoned the BNP chairperson’s Assistant Personal Secretary Md Suratuzzaman to fix the menu of the dinner on Sunday afternoon.
When contacted, Suratuzzaman confirmed to the Dhaka Tribune that the prime minister’s APS Md Saifuzzaman had called him to know about the opposition leader’s menu.
“I told him that the menu will be informed the day before the honourable leader of the opposition visits Ganabhaban. She usually avoids rich food,” he said.
Hasina called Khaleda on Saturday and invited the opposition leader to a dinner at Ganabhaban on Monday to initiate a dialogue. Khaleda accepted the offer but said she could not go on Monday because of the hartal.
This year, the characters have shifted but the argument remains almost the same. The opposition party and its alliances say they will not participate in the next elections if a “non-partisan government” does not oversee the polls.
In response to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s proposal for an all-party interim government to administer the election, opposition leader Khaleda Zia proposed that the non-partisan government could comprise 10 advisers from the previous “successful” caretaker governments.
This time around, the BNP-led opposition is waging a movement and enforcing 60 hours of shutdown, saying they will not accept Hasina as the chief of the polls-time government.
The same conflict rooting from the debate over who would head the ad hoc government drove the country straight into “a state of emergency” seven years ago. It also forced the then president Iajuddin Ahmed to step aside for former central bank governor Fakhruddin.
In response to Hasina’s request to withdraw the strike, Khaleda told her that she could not do it without consulting her alliance partners. “I also said clearly that the movement and the dialogue would go simultaneously.”
Expressing his optimism about a dialogue, BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir thanked the prime minister, saying the dialogue could take place any time after October 29 when the opposition alliance’s 60-hour hartal ended.
“The prime minister has invited the opposition leader to dinner. Madam [Khaleda] did not refuse the invitation as she repeatedly talked about a dialogue to resolve the crisis. So, she might go to the dinner only after finalising [its] date and time,” Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain, BNP’s Standing Committee member, told the Dhaka Tribune.
On the other hand, Awami League Presidium member Matia Chowdhury on Sunday said the talks offer to the BNP was still valid but the talks would be based on the constitution.
Awami League General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam and BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul were playing important roles in initiating the dialogue and talked on the issue at different times.
Asked if he talked with Ashraf on Saturday night after the telephone conversation of Khaleda and Hasina, Fakhrul, said the news was baseless.
A senior leader of the party said there was little possibility that programmes such as hartal and blockade would be announced during the dialogue, but at the same time they did not want to postpone their programmes for a long period, too.
“If there is no positive result from the dialogue, the ongoing movement might lose its rhythm,” the leader said.
However, another senior leader said the government would soften its stance only after a tough street movement was waged. The leader praised Khaleda for taking “the right decision by not withdrawing the hartal. If she had, it would have frustrated party leaders and activists as at least six people were killed on that day [Saturday].”
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, a key ally of the BNP in the 18-party alliance, also did not agree to the withdrawal of the hartal in the context of October 28, 2006 when at least 10 people were killed in violence as the then opposition Awami League had brought out a procession wielding oars and poles.
A Standing Committee member told the Dhaka Tribune, seeking anonymity, that they did not want to shoulder the responsibility of failing to hold the dialogue and that is why finalising the time for the talks would be initiated after October 29.
“The government has not shifted its stance on the polls-time government. So, there is little possibility of a positive outcome of the dialogue, but we do not want to shoulder the responsibility of a foiled initiative,” he said.
