DHAKA, Dec 20 : Bangladesh’s main opposition BNP on Wednesday called for a “non-cooperation” movement against the Awami League-led government, urging people not to pay taxes and utility bills, as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina launched her poll campaign amid political unrest ahead of the January 7 elections.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its mostly far-right allies allege that no election under the incumbent dispensation would be fair and demand the restoration of a non-party interim government for election oversight by amending the country’s Constitution.
“There is no alternative to the launch of non-cooperation of all sorts to establish the rights of every citizen,” BNP spokesman Ruhul Kabir Rizvi told a virtual press conference.
He urged people to start the civil disobedience from Wednesday itself by suspending payment of taxes, and water, gas and electricity bills as part of the movement.
“We urge the countrymen to stick to the demands and boycott the farcical vote,” Rizvi said, adding that he is appealing on behalf of the BNP’s ailing chairperson and former premier Khaleda Zia’s son Tarique Rahman, who now lives in London. Rahman is BNP’s acting president.
Several Bangladeshi courts declared Rahman a “fugitive” as he took refuge in the UK to evade jail terms for several criminal charges, including a grenade attack on a rally of the then-opposition Awami League in 2004 in which 24 people were killed.
Hasina narrowly escaped the attack, which also wounded some 500 of her party leaders, activists and supporters.
Zia, 79, was also convicted and jailed on two graft charges with a 17-year jail term. However, she is now in a hospital with multiple health issues.
Meanwhile, in her maiden election rally in northeastern Sylhet after visiting the shrine of Hazrat Shahjalal, Prime Minister Hasina warned the BNP: “If you play with fire, you will burn your hand.”
“The black sheep (Rahman) sits in London and gives orders. In turn, people are burned and killed here,” she said.
Asking the people to vote for ‘Boat’, her party’s symbol, in the upcoming elections, Hasina said it is “the Prophet Noah’s Boat”.
“This is the boat that saved the human race (and) the people of Bangladesh got freedom by voting for the boat in 1971,” she said.
“We talked about building a Digital Bangladesh and we did that. Now, we will build a smart Bangladesh…There will be no homeless and landless people,” said Hasina, accompanied by her senior cabinet and party colleagues.
Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal, meanwhile, said the current scenario did not suggest the elections to be very competitive but the election commission and the candidates should make it competitive to draw voters to the polls centres.
“We are hopeful to hold a successful election,” Awal said in a brief comment after a meeting with the candidates in northwestern Rajshahi.
The BNP is boycotting the election after its demand for an interim non-party neutral government to organise the voting was rejected by Hasina’s government. The party had boycotted the 2014 election but took part in 2018 polls.
With the BNP boycotting the election, and no other credible opposition party against it, Hasina’s Awami League is likely to gain an upper hand and likely to form the government for the fourth consecutive term.
Since October 29, the BNP has been holding intermittent nationwide strikes and transport blockades to press for their demand for elections under a neutral government, which the ruling party rejected saying the poll would be held in line with the existing Constitution.
According to a media tally, 11 people died and 376 vehicles were torched in the past two months in political violence. Police arrested thousands of opposition activists and figures, including de-facto BNP leader and party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, over charges of violence.
In the latest such violence, unidentified persons on Tuesday set on fire a passenger train in Dhaka in which four people, including a child, were killed. The arson attack on the train was the fifth such incident in the past month and the deadliest so far in terms of casualties.
Last week, one passenger was killed and dozens wounded as saboteurs uprooted railway tracks which resulted in the derailment of seven carriages of a train in Gazipur on the outskirts of the national capital. (PTI)
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