‘AL will come again’

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s son Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed is optimistic about the Awami League’s victory in the looming general elections.

“I have information that the Awami League will return to power. The propagandas being run by the BNP must be tackled,” he told an Iftar gathering organised by Jubo League at the Bangabandhu Avenue on Tuesday.

Sajeeb, better known by his nickname, Joy, said also asked the party leaders and activists to remind the young voters about the ‘misrule and corruption’ of the past BNP-Jamaat government in the next six months.

He returned to Bangladesh on July 16 with his wife, Christine, and daughter, Sophia. He joined her mother and other family members at an Iftar on Monday hosted by President Abdul Hamid at Bangabhaban.

The grandson of the nation’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was hopeful that Bangladesh will turn into a middle-income country in the next 10 years ‘if the Awami League remained in power’.

“The country will go backwards if the BNP comes to power. People of Bangladesh will never forget those days of the BNP-Jamaat tenure,” he added.

Referring to the Aug 21, 2004 grenade attack on an Awami League rally, Sajeeb said, “Bombs were hurled at my mother. It killed 23 leaders and activists of Awami League and injured some 400 others.”

“My mother survived somehow, but Ivy Rahman was not that lucky. She used to adore me like my mother,” Sajeeb added. “The murders of the Aug 21 will be tried.”

He alleged the attack had been planned at Hawa Bhaban. “The son of the then Prime Minister, Tarique Rahman, had made the plan to kill my mother.”

Tarique, the Senior Vice Chairman of BNP, is widely believed to have run a government parallel to his mother Khaleda Zia's 2001-6 government from her erstwhile Hawa Bhaban political office in Gulshan to commit corruption.

Sajeeb referred to reports prepared by the Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) and said,” TIB surveys said that Bangladesh topped the list of corruption-stricken countries during BNP’s tenure. Now, its position is better than at least 40 countries.”

He compared the tenure of the incumbent government with that of the last BNP-Jamaat government and asked, “Where has the government failed?”