CHAPAINAWABGANJ — In the Awami League’s rigged elections, winners were chosen by the administration rather than by voters, Nurul Islam Bulbul, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami chief for Dhaka south city, said over the weekend.
“In the Awami League’s staged elections, the people did not choose the winners; the administration did,” said Bulbul, who is also Jamaat’s parliamentary candidate for Chapainawabganj-3. “That victory through night-time voting by the administration was not a victory. The people boycotted those elections.”
Bulbul was speaking as chief guest at a youth rally at the Rehaichor polling center in Chapainawabganj-3 on Saturday night.
“The one-sided election of 2014, the night-time vote of 2018 and the ‘I-and-dummy’ election of 2024 were all farcical,” Bulbul said. “We know where, when and who held secret meetings with the administration — the district commissioners and superintendents of police — before the polls. It was decided in those secret meetings who would be elected and how the winners would be declared. Today, some who won in those farcical elections speak with arrogance. But they were never elected by the people’s vote, and they never will be. The people know who the corrupt, the terrorists, the land grabbers and the extortionists are. The people will never vote for them.”
Those who put drugs and weapons in the hands of the youth of Chapainawabganj to destroy them must be resisted collectively, Bulbul said. Those who use young people as political tools should be rejected through the ballot.
“There is no place for drugs or terror in Jamaat-e-Islami,” he told the gathering. “Jamaat is working to raise the youth as people of ideology and moral values.”
If Jamaat-e-Islami comes to power, he said, young people will be developed as entrepreneurs to reduce unemployment, and young men and women will be given vocational training to make each of them a national asset. If elected, he said, he would take steps to end “village politics” and restore order in Chapainawabganj, create earning opportunities at home for residents, build up town and village equally, and ensure equal rights for farmers, workers and the marginalized regardless of party, faith or community. State steps would be taken, he said, to protect migrant workers from fraud, with their advance payments returned automatically if they could not travel. He also pledged measures against erosion on the Mahananda and Padma rivers, the development of tourism centers, and an end to the scarcity of clean drinking water.
Earlier on Saturday afternoon, Bulbul addressed a women’s rally at the same Rehaichor center in ward 13 of Chapainawabganj municipality. “Women have an important role in establishing an Islamic state,” he said. “Terrorists, extortionists, land grabbers and the corrupt must be defeated through women’s votes.”
He urged women to make decisions about politicians who put weapons in the hands of their children, who supply drugs and who use their children’s blood for politics. He appealed to the mothers and sisters of Chapainawabganj-3 to vote in favor of Islam, saying an Islamic society would ensure safety, freedom, justice and basic rights for all.
Despite 17 years of repression by the Awami government, Bulbul said, he had never been cut off from the people. Free medical camps had been organized to provide health care and medicine, and 10 ambulances were being used to transport patients for advanced treatment. Vocational training for unemployed youth and the distribution of sewing machines and livestock to support women as entrepreneurs were continuing. Even 54 years after independence, he said, the state had not yet ensured the basic rights of food, clothing, shelter, education and health care.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report