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Published : 10 Jun 2023, 06:24 PM
Jamaat-e-Islami leader Syed Abdullah Md Taher has said the party will thwart the general elections if a caretaker government is not appointed.
Taher also demanded the release of Jamaat leaders from prison and protested the surging prices of daily commodities while speaking at the Institution of Engineers auditorium on Saturday.
“Those in the government now have also talked about an impartial election. We also want a proper election, democracy requires that,” he said.
“It is unfortunate for this nation that it had to sacrifice for the Language Movement and liberation. But it was never able to cast votes properly since the independence.”
“The 2014 and 2018 elections are over, but it can’t happen again. This time the elections will be held under a caretaker government. Let us talk and you will get a solution,” Taher said.
Taher mentioned that they were prepared to ‘take to the streets’ to ensure a caretaker government.
“You know that our innocent leaders are stuck in jail. We don’t only want to demand their release, we want their immediate release. Otherwise, the situation will get more heated,” Taher added.
Shafiqul Islam Masud, the secretary of Jamaat’s Dhaka South unit, demanded the government reinstate the party by returning its registration as a political group to restore the ‘balance of justice’ in the country.
In 2013, the High Court cancelled the registration of Jamaat, which opposed Bangladesh’s independence. Five years later, the Election Commission published a gazette notification, scrapping the registration of Jamaat and barring it from contesting the 2018 election.
However, the party exists now as a fringe political entity.
Jamaat, once a major player in national politics, has been reduced to a spent force in recent years as most of the party’s brass either were sentenced to death for their crimes against humanity back in 1971 or driven underground due to the government’s clampdown on the party’s activities.
BNP’s Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir at a press conference on Dec 8 last year, for the first time, conceded that his party would not form an official alliance with others to wage a joint anti-government campaign.
Many analysts believe that announcement was essentially the death knell for the BNP-led 20-party alliance, of which Jamaat was a significant element.
The party’s representatives were notably absent from the liaison committee BNP formed with other parties on Dec 26 and from the Dec 29 meeting with the newly-formed 12-party alliance, a remnant of the 20-party alliance.
Saturday’s rally was Jamaat’s first in more than a decade and comes with the general elections looming.
