::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Voicebox

"I have been campaigning for the last one year against a section of ministers and lawmakers who have amassed a huge wealth through illegal means. Democracy doesn't mean that a handful of people will plunder the wealth of the majority."
Col (retd) OLI AHMED
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) MP and the party's standing committee member.

"Probably he is the only Hindu rajakar."
SYED MANJUR ELAHI
businessperson and former advisor of the caretaker government
jokingly saying, "Many people even call him (Debapriya Bhattacharya) a rajakar."
Bhattacharya is an economist.

"The locals do not realise that the garbage containers are changed every day as it is done after 1:00 am in the morning."
RAJU
a Dhaka City Corporation employee.
A photograph was run by The Daily Star, however, showing a disposable garbage container left in a busy thoroughfare for three days, emitting foul smells.

"And what the Iraqis are going to have to eventually do is convince those who are conducting suiciders who are not inspired by Al Qaeda, for example, to realise there's a peaceful tomorrow."
GEORGE W BUSH
president
the United States.

"Ministers will leave the country if the party fails to win the next election but we will have to stay home and face the adverse situation."
SM GAZNAVI
general secretary of Borhanuddin upazila unit of the BNP.

"The dirty competition between the BNP and the Awami League to get deposed autocrat HM Ershad into their fold is a naked manifestation of political bankruptcy of the country's two-party politics."
MANJURUL AHSAN KHAN
president
the Communist Party of Bangladesh.

"How did you feel when you were received at the residence of Ershad whom your mother (Khaleda Zia) had once identified as her husband's killer?"
SHEIKH HASINA
Leader of the Opposition Awami League.

"I don't want to see myself in jail again and I have almost decided to join the four-party alliance."
HM ERSHAD
deposed President and leader of Jatiya Party.

"He (Rahim) asked me to call him on his cellphone after I cut the cables. On receiving my call, he was supposed to send a man with a powerful bomb to be installed inside the electric-metre room."
NURUNNABI
who was caught while cutting cables at the electric-metre room of the Bangabandhu Museum in Dhanmondi Road no 32.
Nurrunnabi told the curator of the museum that his guru Rahim Mollah of Mohammedpur asked him to cut the cables.

"Good leaders of some small parties like Dr Kamal Hossain and Rashed Khan Menon should also get a chance in the parliament."
NAZMUL HUDA
barrister and communications minister.
According to Huda, a government of national consensus should be formed, and the main opposition Awami League should be offered 60 parliamentary seats and its allies another 14 seats.

QUOTATIONS ARE TAKEN FROM DIFFERENT LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL NEWSPAPERS.
Compiled by: AHMEDE HUSSAIN