UNB :
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday questioned how BNP leader Tarique Rahman can lead the party as he does not dare to return home.
“If a political leader has no courage to return home, how can he lead?” she wondered addressing a discussion, marking the 73rd founding anniversary of Bangladesh Awami League.
Hasina, also president of ruling AL, presided over the discussion held at her party’s central office in the city’s Bangabandhu Avenue through a videoconference from Ganobhaban
She said it is not correct to say that Tarique Zia is not allowed to return home. “None ousted him. He willingly went abroad and then didn’t return,” she said.
Tarique went abroad during the caretaker government
(in September 2008) giving a written bond that he won’t do politics anymore, she said, asking the BNP leaders how they could forget it.
In this context, Hasina said she was obstructed to return home during the then caretaker government, but she came back home (on May 7, 2007) defying the ban on her travel taking it as a challenge.
Noting that she was sued in a murder case and arrest warrant was issued against her, the PM said she announced she would return home, appear before the court and face the case.
The premier again raised the question how the election can be participatory one when its rival BNP is facing the crisis of right leadership.
“How the election can be participatory one when a party had created from a pocket of a person who illegally grabbed the power and now its leaders are convicted of corruption, murder and arms-haul charges,” she said. Tariq, she said, is a fugitive too.
Referring to the 2018 national election, the PM said BNP leaders changed their candidate in a constituency on several occasions due to nomination business.
She said Enam Ahmed Chowdhury and Morshed Khan told her that Tarique Zia sought money in exchange for giving them the party’s nomination, but they refused.
Hasina questioned how the party can attract the voters when they start election business and how the people can vote for a party when it is leaderless.
Criticising the BNP acting chairman she said Tarique Rahman has proved that his parents Ziaur Rahman and Khaleda Zia were involved in the 1975 August carnage conspiracy by supporting the slogan of ‘pachatt orer hatiar’ or the killers.
Lambasting Ziaur Rahman for rewarding the 15th August killers with lucrative jobs in Bangladesh foreign missions, she said he got killed and even none found his body.
“Yes, Ershad had brought a box (to Dhaka). But what was in the box? Later, Ershad himself said Zia’s body had not been there in that box. But the box was buried in Sangsad Bhaban (Chandrima Udyan),” she said, adding that even Khaleda Zia and her son can’t say that they had seen his body.
She said BNP leaders now place floral wreaths there. But Khaleda’s spouse or the BNP leader is not there. “The truth will get revealed one day,” she said.
