Pro-Khaleda faction BNP focuses on her release before polls

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The BNP’s pro-Khaleda faction has shelved other issues for her release but reformists want to bring in unity in the party in the run-up to general elections that the Election Commission says will be held by December next year.

Highly placed BNP sources said Khaleda Zia’s release will top other considerations for her followers in the coming days while the Saifur Rahman-led group is putting emphasis on party unity in a bid to participate in the next elections.

Pro-Saifur leaders will continue their effort to convince the old guard of the need for unity but Khandaker Delwar Hossain-led leaders said the party is already united under Khaleda’s leadership and any decision on strengthening the cohesion must come from her.

“They (pro-Saifur leaders) must have to return to the party fold without any condition,” said a pro-Khaleda stalwart.

Both the factions, however, hoped that the caretaker government will lift the emergency as soon as possible and as per the Election Commission’s roadmap, hold a free, fair and meaningful election by the end of the coming year.

Khaleda’s followers claim that her release is a must for a meaningful election. But Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, standing committee member of the pro-Saifur faction, told reporters that he saw nothing that may justify standing up against the government right now.

However, the BNP’s most grass-roots level leaders, particularly the district-level leaders, are ready to implement the direction of the party’s central command for the release of their detained party chairperson.

“We will make it a success whatever programme the party announces in a bid to free our chairperson,” Waliullah Rabbani, general secretary of Kishoreganj district unit BNP told The Daily Star yesterday.

When asked about their plan for the coming year, pro-Saifur leader Lt Gen (retd) Mahbubur Rahman said, “I hope the nation will get an effective parliament in the new year through a meaningful election according to the roadmap”.

“Unity process will get priority in our party and I also hope that senior leaders of the party will realise the necessity of unity in the coming days,” Mahbub, who is also a standing committee member of the BNP, told this newspaper.

Some leaders, however, believe that the government is not going to lift the emergency anytime soon because they think in that case the administration will have to face backlash from people due to the ongoing economic crisis.

“We want the release of Khaleda Zia, lifting of the emergency and opening up of indoor politics … I think the government should free Khaleda Zia and take suggestion from her on matters relating to running the country properly,” Moazzem Hossain Alal, former lawmaker and general secretary of Jatiyatabadi Jubo Dal, told The Daily Star.

“But I believe the government, fearing popular movement, will not lift the emergency”, Alal, who is close to Khandaker Delwar, said.

Party leaders said Delwar, who Khaleda appointed as secretary general just before her arrest in early September, and his few colleagues are maintaining close contact with district-level leaders so that the party might create public opinion to free Khaleda once political activities are allowed.

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