Information and Broadcasting Minister Zahir Uddin Swapan has said an attempt is under way to artificially take politics outside parliament. Making the national parliament effective, keeping political debate within a democratic culture and dignifying the political process should be everyone’s main goal, he said.
He made the remarks on Monday morning at a discussion at the National Press Club’s Tofazzal Hossain Manik Miah hall, organised jointly by the Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists (BFUJ) and the Dhaka Union of Journalists (DUJ) to mark the second anniversary of the July uprising.
The information minister said that even 55 years after the great war of independence, people had had to give their lives for the right to vote — a matter of shame and self-criticism for the nation. But through long struggle and sacrifice, the people had regained the right to vote, and the current parliament was running on that mandate.
He said the national parliament should be the centre of a democracy won at the cost of so much blood and sacrifice. Sadly, he said, an attempt was still under way to take politics to the streets or outside parliament, while on social media there was resort to various propaganda, obscenity and conspiracy beyond ordinary values — no good sign.
On implementing the July charter, Zahir Uddin Swapan said the blood of the martyrs was bound up with every letter of it. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Tareque Rahman, the government was committed to implementing the July charter fully through the elected parliament. Making parliament more effective, raising the dignity of the judiciary, protecting the country’s sovereignty and creating jobs for young people were the current government’s priorities, he said.
The information minister said that just as BNP had campaigned for good governance and democracy from outside power in the past, the government was now working to achieve the same goals from within power. The martyrs’ sacrifice would be fulfilled only when good governance could be ensured through the unity of democratic forces, he said.
Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives Minister Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir was chief guest at the event. BFUJ president Obaidur Rahman Shaheen, secretary general Kader Gani Chowdhury, National Press Club president Hasan Hafiz, and the Press Information Department’s principal information officer Syed Abdal Ahmad were among the journalist leaders present.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report