Dr Kamal addressing a rally organized by Jatiya Ainjibi Oikya Front in the city. -AA
The opposition alliance, Jatiya Oikya Front, will not boycott the next month's parliamentary election as one of its major components, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), stumbled politically down only because of staying away from the previous election.
"A huge loss has been incurred for boycotting the parliamentary election in 2014," Kamal Hossain, a former foreign minister and jurist who spearheads the alliance, told a lawyers' gathering in Dhaka yesterday. Kamal (generally known as Dr. Kamal) said his alliance will join the election under any circumstance calling upon the alliance leaders to ensure that no such harm will be done in future.
He was addressing a rally organized by Jatiya Ainjibi Oikya Front (the lawyers' front of the alliance) on the premises of Supreme Court Bar Association. The BNP forged the alliance with Kamal's Gono Forum and few other small political parties being led by heavy-weight politicians in October to press for seven point demands, including release of jailed former prime minister Khaleda Zia and dissolution of parliament ahead of the national election. Kamal, the president of Gono Forum, iterated his demand for release of
Khaleda, who has been in jail after a court in February sentenced her to five years in prison - which was doubled to 10 years by a High Court bench later, over conviction in misappropriation of funds intended for orphans.
She was convicted in yet another graft case, but her party dismissed the conviction in two cases as politically motivated.
Earlier in November, leaders of the alliance held dialogue twice with the ruling Awami League-coalition of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to accept their demands to create an atmosphere conducive for a credible election. They also had meeting with the KM Nurul Huda-led Election Commission, which initially set December 23 for voting, but revised to December 30 as the opposition demanded a month of deferral to the national polls.
Major political camps have now been selecting contestants for the upcoming election as the AL, BNP and Jatiyo Party of former military ruler Hussain Muhammad Ershad concluded sale of nomination papers among the aspirants.
Kamal while addressing the gathering of the newly floated platform of pro-BNP lawyers repeated his call to the supporters to guard the polling stations on the election-day to foil the ruling party's efforts of vote rigging. "Thousands of people will go to vote and the voters will have to guard the polling stations," he said adding that the alliance's victory in the next election would ensure restoration of people's ownership as stated by the constitution.
Kamal, one of the framers of Bangladesh's Constitution, warned that the ruling party would flex muscle during the election. "But we need to march forward," he said calling upon nearly 20 million new voters to hold their rights of ownership of the country.
The former minister also castigated the government of 'interfering' in the judiciary saying that the former chief justice Surendra Kumar Sinha had to pay for his ruling over the 16th amendment to the constitution. Referring to the previous general election, Kamal said the government had pledged to hold another election soon after the January 5, 2014 polls, but it never happened.
"If there was an award for deception, then they deserve it," he said asking the government to release all the political prisoners to ensure a level playing field. BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir who also addressed the rally demanded release of Khaleda Zia. Calling the lawyers to raise a movement to restore the judiciary's freedom, he said, "The people will be deprived of the rule of law if it's not ensured."
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