BNP is afraid of election because it cannot rig the vote now: Hasina

She says people will not accept the BNP’s allegations of vote fraud because of the party’s history of “election engineering”

Golam Mujtaba Dhrubabdnews24.com
Published : 24 Sept 2022, 08:09 PM
Updated : 24 Sept 2022, 08:09 PM

Sheikh Hasina has taken a fresh dig at the BNP, saying the opposition party is afraid of seeking a popular mandate in elections because it will not be able to rig the vote.

Speaking at a news conference at Bangladesh’s permanent mission to the UN in New York on Saturday, the prime minister said people would not accept the BNP’s allegations of vote fraud because of the party’s history of “election engineering”.

"Now they are speaking about elections. I don't know if people will accept it."

Helming the ruling Awami League for four decades, she ripped into the arch-rival BNP for overseeing parliamentary elections on Feb 15, 1996, one and a half months after which the party had to resign amid protests.

“When a transparent election is going to be held, I think they are actually frightened because they won’t get the opportunity in that case to grab power by stealing votes, like they did by making a voter roll with 12.3 million fake voters.”

"But there is nothing to be afraid of," she said.

Hasina took questions from journalists at the press conference a day after her address to the United Nations General Assembly. The BNP criticised her for speaking about peace while “resorting to violence to muffle descent”.

“The people of Bangladesh are very conscious. They get their rights through movements if these are infringed upon.”

She claimed the elections under the Awami League government were more transparent than the previous ones.

In her words, the BNP did not contest in the 2014 elections because it is “used to usurping power through killings, coup and conspiracy”.

In the 2018 polls, the prime minister alleged, the BNP’s central leadership sold nominations to more candidates than the number of seats and finally they left the activists to fend for themselves.