Student-led NCP doesn’t want Bangladesh Awami League’s participation in polls

Dhaka, Mar 19 (PTI): The student-led National Citizen Party (NCP) said that they don’t want the party of deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh Awami League to participate in the elections.

“No, we do not want the Awami League to participate in the elections,” NCP’s convenor Nahid Islam told the US-based international current affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region The Diplomat in an interview published on late Tuesday.

He said, without elaboration, that those within the Awami League “are responsible for wrongdoing must be put on trial” at first.

“We aim to establish the Second Republic through the setting up of a Constituent Assembly, through which we seek to introduce a new Constitution and restructure the country’s power dynamics,” Islam said as asked to explain the NCP’s plan.

Asked what kind of second republic NCP envisaged, he said their primary demand for the Second Republic was a new constitution, which would be “rooted in the spirit of the 1971 Liberation War and the July Uprising”.

NCP emerged as a political party visibly with the blessings of interim government chief Professor Muhammad Yunus with students who led the last year’s July-August mass uprising under a banner called Students against Discrimination (SAD) or Anti-Discrimination Student Movement.

Asked what his party’s stance was on diplomacy, Islam said, “first and foremost, we want Bangladesh to pursue a balanced and beneficial diplomatic approach, free from the dominance of any foreign power”.

“In the past, we saw regimes heavily dependent on Delhi’s influence. However, we will not allow Bangladesh’s politics to be centred around either India or Pakistan. The NCP will remain solely Bangladesh-centric, prioritizing national interests above all,” he said.

SAD initially began a street campaign demanding reform of the quota system for government jobs but it turned into a political movement for the ouster of the Awami League regime as it tried to tame protestors using brutal force.

Hasina left Bangladesh for India on August 5, 2024, when the violent movement visibly turned into a mass uprising.

Yunus, who was in Paris at that time, flew back to Bangladesh three days later and assumed charge of the interim government as its Chief Adviser and the SAD nominee.

According to a UN rights office (OHCHR) report some 1400 people were killed between July 15 to August 15, 2024, as the retaliatory violence continued even after the ouster of the violence targeting policemen as well.

Most Awami League leaders and ministers of the fallen regime were arrested or went into hiding at home and abroad since the regime change and as its fallout, ex-premier Khaleda Zia’s BNP emerged as the biggest party in the political landscape.

Islam’s comments came amid speculations over the planned election as the interim government took up a series of reform initiatives forming several commissions, including one on constitutional reform.

BNP and several other parties and political analysts, however, sought the election be held in the quickest possible time after minimal reforms particularly related to the electoral system saying reform was a “continuous process” and an unelected government should not continue in power for long.

When asked if the NCP wanted the polls to be held, Islam said “an election is not our immediate priority (and) we are not at present setting a specific timeline for the election”.

“Our focus is on getting culprits from the previous regime put on trial, ensuring a stable law and order situation in the country, and setting up a Constituent Assembly,” he said.

The NCP chief added, “We are in favour of reforming the constitution and the electoral system so that a fascist regime cannot emerge again”.

Another key-leader of the party Sarjis Alam earlier this month said “No one should even mention elections until Sheikh Hasina is brought to justice. There will be no election in Bangladesh until the murderer Hasina is seen on the gallows”.

Now defunct SAD leaders earlier sought to ban Awami League from politics when BNP and several other parties opposed the idea but an influential member of the interim cabinet as a student representative Mahfuz Alam earlier said Awami League would not be allowed to take part in elections.

BNP also opposed the idea of scrapping the 1972 constitution, framed a year after Bangladesh’s emergence, and binned the proposed second republic with its secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir saying “I am afraid, some quarters are trying to belittle our (1971) Liberation War.

Yunus previously evaded a clear answer to the question of a timeline for elections, but visibly amid political pressure he recently said polls could be held in December this year after minimal required reforms but the process could linger until June next year if the political parties agreed to a larger reform package.

On Awami League’s participation in the poll, Yunus earlier this month in an interview with BBC said “They (Awami League) have to decide if they want to do it, I cannot decide for them” but added, “The election commission decides who participates in the election”.

Islam was one of the three student representatives in Yunus’s interim council of advisers, effectively the cabinet, while he quit the government to lead NCP ahead of its inception amid criticism that the government was backing up the new “king’s party” using its machinery. PTI AR HIG HIG

(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)