Staff Reporter :
The Awami League leaders have trashed a study by Bertelsmann Stiftung that dubbed Bangladesh an autocracy which “no longer met the minimum standards of democracy,” saying it is a conspiracy of BNP to tarnish the country’s image.
They also questioned the study’s sourcing and it’s timing, which came just after the country’s graduation from a least developed country to developing one.
Criticizing the report of Beltesmann Stiftung of Germany, Commerce Minister and Awami League Advisory Committee Member Tofail Ahmed said that tagging Bangladesh along with five other states as an autocrat nation is nothing but a deep conspiracy to tarnish the image of Bangladesh.
When the country is celebrating the occasion of it graduation from the Least Developed Country (LDC), publication of such a report is only to undermine its achievements, he said, mentioning that the people understand it very well.
The minister said this while addressing a discussion on ‘Liberation War’ at the Jatiya Press Club in the city on Saturday.
“As per the UN standard, we have achieved the category of a developing nation. Now people in Dhaka city and even in remote villages are celebrating the occasion. This report at this very moment is nothing but a conspiracy against the country,” Tofail said.
Senior party leaders in separate functions yesterday also accused the BNP and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami of paying lobbyists to smear Bangladesh’s image. They allege that a group of intellectuals is always trying to paint Bangladesh as a failed state.
Bangladesh’s democratic standard, they claim, is far better than many western countries.
The report, conducted between February 2015 and January 2017, says that five countries, including Bangladesh, did no longer meet minimum standards of democracy.
“These five new autocracies have crossed a threshold that the defective democracies of Honduras, Hungary, Moldova, Niger, the Philippines and Turkey are nearing, though to varying degrees,” says the study.
Awami League Presidium Member Abdul Matin Khasru called the study baseless. “Bangladesh is a 100 percent democratic country,” he said. “There’s no option to question its standards.”
“Maybe the Germany-based think tank collected information from wrong sources who had no connection to Bangladesh or from anti-Bangladesh and anti-Awami League people,” he added.
Awami League Organizing Secretary Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury claimed that Bangladesh’s democratic standard is “far better than the US or any other western country” but the world lobby, bribed by Jamaat, was trying to tarnish Bangladesh’s image.
