Ershad flips again

In a span of eight days former military dictator HM Ershad for the second time contradicted his own statement, reiterating in his tirade against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday that the country got nothing but misrule and terrorism following the January 5 national polls.

Moreover, the Jatiya Party (JP) chairman claimed that it was the credit of his party, which, by contesting in the voterless polls, helped save democracy and Awami League form a government, for which two lawmakers from Hasina's party were able to contest and be elected to lead international parliamentary bodies.

The statements were in conflict with his own letter congratulating Hasina, also the Awami League president, on Thursday on Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury and Saber Hossain Chowdhury being recently elected chairperson and president of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) respectively.

In it he had stated that it was for the “skilled, determined, courageous and honest leader of the state”, Hasina, that the world was coming to know of Bangladesh's democracy.

He had also said it did not matter who had become the IPU president rather the big issue was that the person was nominated by Hasina to contest the country's parliamentary election and that the person was a member of a parliament being led by Hasina.

At a views-exchange meeting at his Banani office on October 16, Ershad had said there was no democracy in Bangladesh and the country was witnessing a one party democracy.

On November 18, 2013, Ershad announced that JP would take part in the national polls. On December 3 he announced his party's boycott saying, “I would not take part in the elections even if it costs me my life.”

Ershad withdrew from Dhaka-17 constituency but he was in the race in Lalmonirhat-1 and in Rangpur-3, where he won on January 5. He took oath as a legislator of the 10th parliament on January 12, immediately leaving the parliament building afterwards without talking to the press.

Yesterday, Ershad, also the special envoy to the prime minister, was addressing a rally in the capital's Kakrail marking the day JP claims is the founding anniversary of the upazila parishad system, constituted by the military government of Ershad of 1982-90.

Pointing at BNP, he said the party had withdrawn the system but now itself was on the way to be ruined.