Bangla Opp. says ‘ strongly’ wants to contest elections
Dhaka, Sept. 30: Bangladesh’s main Opposition political group, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party ( BNP), “strongly” wants to take part in national elections due in three months, the party’s secretary general told Reuters on Saturday.
The BNP will hold a public meeting in the capital Dhaka on Sunday and present demands that include the release of its jailed leader Khaleda Zia, installing a neutral caretaker government, and involving the Army to oversee the December elections, BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said.
“As a large party, we have all the preparations for participating in ( a) coming election, but for that we need a level playing field, which is not there,” he said.
“We are demanding a neutral government as it is our experience that with the ruling party there cannot be a free and fair election.”
The interview marks the first time the BNP has explicitly stated its plans for the national election, during which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League — accused of increasingly authoritarian rule — is expected to face a tough fight.
Elections in Bangladesh, which won independence in 1971, are usually marked by violence and protests, and the national polls in December are expected to be no different, as several members of the BNP including its leader are in jail.
The BNP boycotted the 2014 polls after Ms Hasina’s governing Awami League, which has been in power since 2009, declined demands to put in place a nonpartisan caretaker government.
Ms Khaleda, a two- term Prime Minister with whom Ms Hasina has a long and bitter rivalry, was jailed in February for five years on corruption charges that she alleged were part of a plot to hamper her political career.