Reza Mahmud :
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is moving ahead to take part in the upcoming national election fixing specific strategies, party insiders said.
The first strategy is to take all-out preparation for the 11th Parliamentary election. The another is to put pressure on the government continuously for a neutral or election time government.
Senior leaders of the BNP said, the country’s people and international community, especially the development partners, will not accept another one-sided polls like the 10th Parliamentary election held on January 5 in 2014. They believe strongly that the incumbent government will not be successful if it tries to hold another January 5 election.
“The people will not cooperate with the government to hold another one-sided polls. We believe that the people will play an important role to regain their rights to franchise,” BNP National Standing Committee Member Mirza Abbas told The New Nation.
Mirza Abbas said, “The BNP’s stand about the next election is clear. We want a participatory polls only under a neutral government, which AL wanted in the past. And even it observed 173 days hartal to meet the care taker government system for an election in free and fair manner.” Senior party leaders said, the BNP leaders and activists in different districts have become disappointed at the situation which has been created in last couple of years.
“The BNP has been staying outside the state power for a long time. It highly frustrated the partymen across the country. We need to cement the organisation by any means. The election preparation is an effective strategy to bring back enthusiasm among the party men from its grass root levels,” said one of the members of the party’s policy making body preferring anonymity.
Most of the leaders and activists are careful to skip arrests as they have been sued in many cases in the past, he added. The other senior leaders also agreed with the views.
They said, the party high command is also anxious with the situation. They are now trying to overcome it and make the party workable ahead of the next polls.
The party men are waiting for long to overcome the frustration and bring themselves in the mainstream of the politics.
As part thereof, party Chairperson Khaleda Zia directed the party senior leaders to take all out preparations for next polls.
She met the several stages of leaders of her party in the Chairperson’s Gulshan office in recent days to take strategies to foil ruling party’s tricks to keep BNP out of polls and politics.
The leaders requested the party chief to take poll oriented strategy which will be effective for keeping pressure on the government to compel to accept the demand of polls time neutral government, reviving the grass root leaders and activists.
Mir Mohammad Nasir Uddin, a Vice-Chairman of BNP told the New Nation, “The government may try to hold election under them. But the people will not accept that. The people may not be soft to the government’s blue print.”
He said, “We have met our party chief Begum Khaleda Zia recently to discuss the political situation. Most of them are doubtful about fairness of election under the current AL government.”
He said also the party has some plans to involve people with its pro-people movement in days ahead.
