The government is preparing to rig the Thakurgaon by-election, Dr AHM Hamidur Rahman Azad, coordinator of the 11-party alliance’s liaison committee and an assistant secretary general of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, alleged on Friday.
He claimed a groundswell of support had built up for the alliance’s candidate, Delawar Hossain, and said they were receiving reports that preparations were under way to rig the 29 October by-election as on 12 February.
The alliance’s liaison committee met on Friday at the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition on Minto Road in Dhaka. Azad spoke to journalists at a briefing after the meeting at midday.
The Thakurgaon-1 seat fell vacant after its former MP, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, was elected President and took the oath of office.
“If anything of that kind happens, I urge the government to learn from the Magura election,” Azad said. “The Magura election is a black chapter in the history of Bangladesh’s elections. It sparked a movement to bring down the government, which later reached its final stage.”
Addressing the government, he said: “If the government does not want to stay in power, we cannot keep it in power by force.” He said the government’s conduct in various matters showed a tendency to create excuses to give up power. He added that the alliance did not want a repeat of anything like the Magura election, and called on the government to drop any such ill-intentioned plan if it had one.
Demanding immediate and effective steps to stop corruption, the Jamaat leader said the routes to corruption must be closed. To that end, he said, the alliance had also called for an independent commission to prevent enforced disappearances and killings, alongside the Anti-Corruption Commission and the Human Rights Commission.
Alleging that the administration was being politicised at every level, Azad said the government was filling it with party loyalists shamelessly. He also alleged that members of the Public Service Commission (PSC) were being invited to tea and forced to resign.
“Students took to the streets demanding recruitment and promotion on merit. The quota movement and the July uprising remind us how merit was killed under the fascist regime of the past. But the present government is walking the same path,” he said.
“Now appointments and promotions are being made on party considerations instead of merit,” alleged the coordinator of the 11-party alliance’s liaison committee.
Azad cited the appointment of Shamsul Alam to the Election Commission at the rank of additional secretary as an example of politicisation.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report