Holding IPU Assembly in Dhaka a farce: BNP
The BNP has said that organising the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly in Bangladesh was a farce, as there is no peoples representative in the present Parliament and human rights are being violated in the country. At a meeting on Sunday night, the BNP standing committee, the highest policy-making body of the party, adopted a resolution in this regard. ,It greeted IPU members who joined the five-day assembly from parliaments representing the people. The meeting greets members from countries where there is parliamentary democracy and they have representative parliaments. Simultaneously, the meeting expressed surprise, saying organising the IPU conference in a country where Parliament does not represent the people, democratic institutions are destroyed, human rights are violated and people face killings, forced disappearances, fear of arrest and false cases, is nothing but a farce, said the resolution.
BNP secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir read out the resolution at a press conference at the partys central office at Naya Paltan. Standing committee member and former Speaker, Barrister Jamiruddin Sircar, said the IPU members are participating in the assembly as representatives of their respective countries, but there is no real representative of Bangladeshi people in the grand assembly of parliamentary democracy. The delegates representing the Bangladesh Parliament in the assembly as lawmakers are representing ghost voters, he claimed.
The former minister called upon the IPU members to take a moral stand to build a representative parliamentary system in Bangladesh by holding a participatory election. We believe that their moral support will play an important role in restoring real parliamentary democracy in the country, he added. Asked as to how a ruling party lawmaker of the Bangladesh Parliament has become president of the IPU when the BNP claims they have been elected in a voter-less election, another standing committee member, Barrister Moudud Ahmed, said
they (the IPU member-countries) would not have elected him president had they known this. In another resolution, the standing committee meeting expressed deep concern over the killing of Chhatra Dal leader, Nurul Alam Nuru, after he was taken away by persons claiming to be law enforcers. It demanded punishment of those involved. The meeting condemned the suspension of mayors of Sylhet, Rajshahi and Habiganj again, even after directives of the Appellate Division. The government suspended elected representatives of the people as they belong to the Opposition party. This is being done to establish one-party rule, said the resolution, demanding cancellation of the order and measures to reinstall them. The meeting also expressed deep concern over the recent militant incidents in different districts and the killing of a RAB official. They criticised the government for its go-alone policy to curb militancy, and called upon it to take the initiative to forge greater unity of all political parties, civil society and social and religious institutions to tackle the menace.
