BNP draws up post-poll movement strategy
After having failed to force the government to postpone the January 5 election in the face of a massive crackdown, the main Opposition BNP is redrawing its strategy to launch a fresh movement. It will include hartal and countrywide organisational tour by BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia to drum up support for a fresh election. According to sources, Khaleda will soon start her tour to encourage her supporters and garner public support against the ruling Awami League to challenge the government’s constitutional legality. As part of the campaign, hartal, agitation, rallies and public meetings will be announced to compel the government to call a fresh election under a non-party caretaker government (CG), the sources said.
BNP standing committee member Mahbubur Rahman told The Independent that hartal will be announced, along with countrywide indefinite blockade, to realise the demand for a fresh election. Khaleda will soon start her countrywide organisational tour to unite BNP supporters and to make public the Awami League’s evil efforts to hang on to power through the farcical election, he added.
Rahman said though the government is claiming that the voter turnout in the 10th parliamentary election was 40 per cent, the actual figure was close to 10 per cent. The government has staged the farcical general election by keeping Khaleda in confinement, he alleged.
In a democracy, no political party is allowed to run a country on the mandate of so few voters, Rahman said, adding that the Awami League has no moral right to govern the nation.
The BNP is contemplating announcing a 72-hour countrywide hartal next week, so that the government is forced to announce a fresh election within January 24, which happens to be the last business day of the Ninth Parliament. Several leaders of the 18-Party Alliance said the political existence of the BNP and its alliance partners will be at stake if they step aside from the ongoing anti-government movement.
Sources said the BNP wants to adopt a go-slow policy, while its alliance partners want to pursue the course of a harsher anti-government campaign, so that the international community is forced to intervene to oust the government from power.
The party is also keeping close relations with diplomats of influential countries in the hope that they would not endorse the government elected through a non-participatory election. Some Opposition leaders, however, observed that the party had relied too much on foreign diplomats, instead of its grass-roots level leaders in pressing their demand, which ultimately resulted in the failure to gear up the anti-government movement.
When asked, Mahbubur Rahman, former Chief of the Army Staff, admitted
so much. He said they have not been able to force the government to postpone the 10th parliamentary election through their movement.
“We wanted to wage an intensive movement, but the government’s autocratic attitude foiled all our efforts. By violating all democratic norms, the government arrested almost all our senior leaders, shut down our party office and started a massive crackdown on our activists across the country. They also confined our party chief in her house by force,” he added.
According to party insiders, the Opposition would wait for the response of the international community to the government elected through the lopsided election and afterwards define their movement strategy. If the international community exerts pressure on the AL-led government to hold another parliamentary poll, the BNP will launch its movement to realise its demand for a fresh election under a non-party CG oversight, they noted.
Courtesy of The Independent
