BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia is likely to announce an action programme along with a charter of demands next week to ‘force the government’ to hold a fresh general election under a non-party caretaker administration.The programme, which will include an ultimatum, will be announced through a press conference any day from August 13 to 15, sources close to the former Prime Minister told The New Nation on Wednesday.Begum Zia and her elder son BNP Senior Vice-Chairman Tarique Rahman, during their recent stay in Saudi Arabia, have chalked out a charter of demands, strategy and action programmes of the movement.”Although the BNP Chairperson, before her departure for Suadi Arabia on July 20 announced that her 20-party nature of the action programmes in the first phase of the movement would be aimed at mass opinion mobilization,” a BNP leader said. The possible programme would include mass-contact tours, including holding public meetings, organizers meetings and opinion exchange meetings with different professional and civil society groups.”The first phase of the movement will be aimed at warming up the political atmosphere and reorganization of the party machinery,” the BNP leader, who preferred not to be named, said. “The anti-government agitation will reach its final phase in the later part of October,” he added.When asked, BNP Acting Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said that his party would go for tough action programmes like that of hartal and siege if the government resists or suppresses their ‘peaceful programmes’. The BNP Chairperson and her elder son Tarique Rahman, who lives in UK, visited Saudi Arabia from July 20 to 25 to perform Umrah had exctensive exchange of ideas on politics and other issues. They had also had a family reunion during that time. Meanwhile, BNP Chairperson has separately convened a meeting of party’s policy making body-the National Standing Committee-on Sunday and a meeting of the senior leaders of the 20-party alliance on Monday to approve their next course of action programmes. Both the meetings will be held at the BNP Chairperson’s office Gulshan in the city in the evening.In the meantime, UNB adds: the BNP Chairperson will hold a meeting with the party’s standing committee members on Sunday night, her Press Secretary Maruf Kamal Khan Sohel told journalists on Wednesday.He said Khaleda would also hold a meeting with top leaders of the BNP-led 20-party alliance on Monday night.As part of the preparation for greater movement, Khaleda Zia, on July 18, approved a 52-member Convening Committee of her party’s crucial Dhaka city unit, led by party standing committee member Mirza Abbas and Swechchhasebak Dal President Sohel, apparently to launch a vigorous movement in the capital this time.Khaleda will elaborately discuss the movement plan with her party’s policymakers and alliance leaders to finalise it.She will also discuss with the party policy makers and her alliance leaders the country’s overall political situation and give them direction to put the opposition leaders and activists at a war mood to make their upcoming movement a success.Earlier on Tuesday night, Khaleda had a meeting with the new convening committee of Dhaka city unit BNP where she asked the party leaders to work together putting behind their conflicts and differences of opinion so that the unit can play a vital role in making their upcoming movement a success.
