Win doesn't mean int'l community accepted polls
BNP yesterday claimed that the election of Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury and lawmaker Saber Hossain Chowdhury as chairperson and president of CPA and IPU respectively did not mean that the international community had accepted the January 5 polls.
“They (voters of the international parliamentary bodies) have expressed their stance independently in all parliamentary associations at international level including Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) and Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU),” claimed BNP Vice Chairman Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury.
“They did not take any suggestion from the executive bodies of the governments of their countries,” he added while replying to journalists' queries at BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia's political office in the capital's Gulshan.
The press conference was organised against the backdrop of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's media briefing on Thursday when she said the election of the lawmakers proved that there was no question about the January 5 polls, which the BNP and most other political parties boycotted.
“…when I met the heads of different states and governments and the chancellor of a country, none of them raised any question about the election,” Hasina had said at the briefing on the outcome of her attending the 10th Asia-Europe Meeting in Italy.
Shamsher said the international community, including the US, the UK and the Commonwealth, were still sticking to what they had said after the January 5 polls -- that the national polls did not reflect people's expectations and that dialogue be held to hold an inclusive polls.
After representatives of countries and organisations called on Hasina, the government on several occasions had tried to propagate the issue of the representatives not bringing up the January 5 polls as a sign that they had come to have accepted it, he said.
But the representatives have afterwards issued statements mentioning that they were still sticking to what they had said after the January 5 polls, said Shamsher.
BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakrul Islam Alamgir alleged that Hasina portrayed her inferiority complex by holding her media briefing nearly about the time Khaleda's rally was ongoing so that television channels could not telecast the latter's speech live.
Fakhrul did not comment when asked of his reaction over convicted war criminal and former Jamaat-e-Islami chief Ghulam Azam's death and of BNP's stance on a hartal called by Sammilito Islami Dalsamuho, an alliance of Islamist parties, demanding arrest of recently sacked minister Abdul Latif Siddique for his “derogatory” comments on Hajj, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Tablighi Jamaat in New York on September 28.
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