Dissident AL, BNP leaders plan to mobilise grassroots support

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Dissident leaders of both the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party seem to have decided to mobilise the party rank and file, particularly at the district level, before facing the two top leaders, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, with their respective proposals to bring about ‘reforms’ in the parties.
The Awami League leaders, determined to curb presidential authority in the party, are now out to influence the district-level leaders before the former face Hasina at the central working committee.
The Awami League leaders in question have brought about the changes in their tactic after Hasina announced that she would not discuss the proposed reforms outside the central working committee. ‘We have started mobilising the district level leaders, so that we can face the party president at the central committee with solid support of the party’s rank and file behind for our reform proposals,’ an organising secretary of the Awami League told new Age Friday evening.
The AL dissidents assigned presidium member Abdur Razzak to contact the district level leaders in favour of their ‘reform proposals’.
The BNP dissidents have also decided to adopt the tactic of wooing the district level leaders in favour of their reform proposals, particularly after Khaleda remarked that reforms would be carried out on the basis of the opinions of grassroots level leaders across the country, instead of the opinion of a few in the party. ‘We know that the leaders and activists across the country want decentralisation of the authority of the party chairperson. Now that the chairperson has referred to the grassroots level leaders, we are reaching the district level to have solid support for the reforms,’ a member of the party’s national executive committee who is closed to the BNP secretary general told New Age Friday night.
However, reformists in the BNP said that they would be able to finalise a draft reform plan in the next three days. ‘Once completed, senior leaders would make a public announcement about it, and would distribute the draft among the party rank and file’, said a former BNP lawmaker.
Meanwhile, some AL dissident leaders at a meeting at the residence of Amir Hossain Amu, an influential presidium member, strongly criticised Sheikh Hasina for unilaterally forging a controversial agreement with Khelafat Majlish and selling out party nominations to the non-political rich for the cancelled parliamentary polls.
They also criticised party general secretary Abdul Jalil for the latter’s much- talked-about April 30, (2004) trump card without consulting senior party leaders.
‘We need reforms to stop signing such communal agreement and making important political statements without prior discussion at the proper party forums’, Amu told waiting reporters after the ‘informal ‘meeting

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