Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s secretary general, former MP Mia Golam Parwar, has said the government has been possessed by the ghost of its majority, and is therefore doing one anti-people thing after another. He said the government had used the strength of its majority to refuse to accept the referendum verdict. It has repealed all the important ordinances in parliament, he said, including the July Charter ordinance, the Supreme Court secretariat ordinance, the human rights commission ordinance and the ordinance on preventing enforced disappearance.
He made the remarks in his address as chief guest at a rally held at the north gate of Baitul Mukarram on Monday afternoon, following a protest march organised by Jamaat-e-Islami’s Dhaka metropolitan south unit against the abnormal rise in fuel oil prices. He also said the rise in fuel oil prices has a direct effect on the public. But the government has raised fuel oil prices three times within seven months of taking office, he said, so that the price of everything including commodities has risen and the public is having to endure extreme hardship.
Golam Parwar also said: when Begum Zia was prime minister we cooperated with her in running the state. But even then the government was put in difficulty by the failure of Tuku, the minister for power and energy. Now that same Tuku has again been given the responsibility of minister for power and energy, pushing the public towards hardship. People no longer say the electricity comes and goes, he said; they say Tuku comes and goes. Calling on the government to determine what should be done through discussion with the opposition in order to save the country from this disorder and chaos, he warned that otherwise, just as people have come out on the streets in the long march, people will later be seen marching on Dhaka from the villages, and the pace of it will not then be containable.
The rally was chaired by Md Nurul Islam Bulbul MP, member of Jamaat-e-Islami’s central executive council and ameer of the Dhaka metropolitan south unit, and conducted by Dr Shafiqul Islam Masud MP, member of the central executive council and secretary of the Dhaka metropolitan south unit. Speaking as special guest, the organisation’s assistant secretary general Maulana Rafiqul Islam Khan MP also addressed the rally.