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Download PDF Awami League-led 14-party alliance leaders met President and Chief Adviser to the caretaker government Iajuddin Ahmed yesterday and demanded that he should perform 11 urgent tasks, including reconstitution of Election Commission (EC) and neutralisation of civil and police administrations, within November 3 to prove his neutrality.
The chief of the non-party interim government assured the eight-member delegation of the 14-party alliance led by Awami League (AL) chief Sheikh Hasina that all possible steps will be initiated for holding a free and fair election.
“If the chief adviser fails to prove his neutrality by this time, we will declare our next course of agitation programmes from a rally at Paltan Maidan on November 3,” Hasina told newsmen after their meeting with Iajuddin at Bangabhaban yesterday afternoon.
“We categorically told the chief adviser that he will have to prove himself neutral through his activities,” Hasina said. She urged people to get ready for launching agitation programmes if implementation of their demands goes otherwise.
President Iajuddin Ahmed assumed the office of chief adviser to the caretaker government on Sunday night ignoring severe opposition from the 14-party alliance. The AL-led alliance, however, neither welcomed nor rejected Iajuddin’s new role.
Asked what Iajuddin told her at the meeting, the AL chief said, “The president assured us that he will maintain neutrality and look into our demands.”
The president assured the 14-party alliance of “all possible steps on his part to stage a free and fair election” and said several steps have already been ordered towards that end, state-run news agency BSS reported quoting the president’s Press Secretary Mokhlesur Rahman Chowdhury.
The 14-party leaders urged the president to play a “historic role” to ensure a free and fair election by recalling his background as a respected university teacher and teachers’ leader.
“I believe we can stage a free and fair election joining our hands as we worked together in the pro-democracy campaigns when I was the president of Dhaka University Teachers’ Association,” the Bangabhaban spokesman quoted the president as telling the 14-party alliance leaders.
The atmosphere of the meeting was “very cordial” and the 14-party leaders wished the president good health and long life, Mokhles said.
Hasina, who visited the Bangabhaban for the first time in the last five years, placed the demands in writing before the caretaker government chief.
The 14-party alliance demanded immediate reconstitution of the EC through removal of the chief election commissioner (CEC), three other election commissioners and the EC secretary.
Their demands also include cancellation of the “political” appointments of upazila election officials and the controversial updated voter list, and introduction of transparent ballot box in the upcoming polls.
The 14-party alliance demanded deploiticisation of the civil and police administrations, state-run media, steps to end political harassment, fresh investigation into rise of militancy, cancellation of firearms licences given in the last two years, and ban on departure of corrupt former ministers, lawmakers and godfathers.
“We will remain rigid on our demands along with the previous proposals for reforms in the Election Commission and electoral laws,” Hasina told reporters.
“If the chief adviser can prove his neutrality through his activities by November 3, we may welcome him,” she said.
“People may have suspicion about him as he was elected the president by a political party. Moreover, his assumption of the office of chief adviser has compromised the basic concept of the non-party caretaker government. So, the president will have to remove all suspicion from the people’s mind through his activities,” the AL chief said.
The AL chief said the road blockade programme has temporarily been postponed, but agitations in the streets will continue.
On reconstitution of the EC, Hasina said the CEC and his other collogues will follow the same path of former chief justice KM Hasan.
Terming Hasan’s refusal to assume the office of the caretaker government chief “people’s victory”, Hasina thanked people who made the countrywide blockade programme from Saturday to Monday a success.
Along with senior leaders of the 14-party alliance, Hasina entered the Bangabhaban at 3:50pm and came out at 5:07pm. From there she rushed to the AL Dhanmondi office to brief newsmen.
The 14-party delegation included Amir Hossain Amu, Abdur Razzak, Tofail Ahmed, Abdul Jalil, Suranjit Sengupta, Rashed Khan Menon and Hasanul Haque Inu. Hasina’s Political Secretary Saber Hossain Chowdhury also accompanied her.
Prior to their visit to the Bangabhaban, the 14-party leaders held two meetings to fix their strategy and discuss the legal aspects of their demands.
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