BNP to contest municipality polls

BNP last night decided in principle to participate in the December 30 municipality elections.
Most of the BNP leaders in a meeting at the party chief's Gulshan office in Dhaka on Wednesday night opined that the party will lose more if it does not participate in the municipality elections.

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“Although we know that the elections will be rigged and our candidates will not be able to win for the Election Commission's partisan role, most of the party leaders spoke in favour of participating the polls,” Lt Gen (retd) Mahbubur Rahman, a standing committee member of the party, told The Daily Star emerging from the meeting which started around 9:00pm.

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He also said that the BNP-led alliance is likely to come up with its formal reaction after Khaleda's meeting with the chiefs of the BNP-led 20-party alliance Thursday evening.
In the two-hour long meeting, a number of mayor of different municipalities told Khaleda Zia that BNP should participate in the elections despite the government operation and wholesale arrest of opposition men across the country.

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Quoting Khaleda, a BNP standing committee member who was present at the meeting said the party will put pressure on the EC so that it creates level-playing field in the battle of election.
The party will announce about this decision formally at a press briefing later, BNP spokesperson Asaduzzaman Khan Ripon told reporters at a formal briefing after the meeting.