Archive for December 17th, 2008
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008The nation has its fundamental rights reinstated today after around two years as an ordinance promulgated by the president Monday ends the state of emergency.Another ordinance decreed the same day repeals the Emergency Powers Ordinance 2007 and Emergency Powers Rules 2007.The laws were proclaimed to enforce the state of emergency declared on January 11 last year amid political turmoil over the ninth parliamentary polls then scheduled for January 22.The revoking ordinance carries some saving clauses meant to be helpful to the anti-graft measures taken under the emergency rules.With the departure of emergency rule, articles 36, 37, 38, 39, ...
(read more) Wednesday, December 17th, 2008The army has proved it wants nothing but the development of Bangladesh as it is happily returning to barracks, said Chief of Army Staff General Moeen U Ahmed yesterday, a day before the withdrawal of around a two-year-long emergency.Appearing on a number of television channels in an unscheduled briefing, Moeen apparently answered to the silent suspicion of many who doubted all along that generals were out to garb power, ordering democracy into oblivion.He said in 2006 many, especially diplomats, went to him and asked when the army would declare martial law as political violence continued. "But I said Bangladesh Army ...
(read more) Wednesday, December 17th, 2008Sectors Commanders of the Liberation War from a victory day celebration yesterday asked next lawmakers to table a bill in the 9th parliament to try war criminals.Every citizen has the ultimate weapon of vote to fight out war criminals and they must use it to prove Bangladesh a country of freedom fighters, said sector commanders and freedom fighters at a Victory Day programme yesterday.Urging people to vote freedom fighters in the upcoming polls, speakers also said freedom fighters have been "exploited" by political parties since independence.“A bill must be brought at the first session of the next parliament to ...
(read more) Wednesday, December 17th, 2008BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia yesterday hoped that the four-party alliance would regain power through the upcoming election securing two-thirds majority in parliament.“I started polls campaign across the country on December 12. I have witnessed high tide (of public support) in favour of 'sheaf of paddy' (BNP's poll symbol). Inshallah, we will go to power again with two-thirds majority,” the former prime minister said at an election rally at Karwan Bazar in the capital.Khaleda said, “The greatest opportunity to save the country is coming on December 29. And people have to elect a truly representative government that can solve the ...
(read more) Wednesday, December 17th, 2008Flawed saving clauses in the newly promulgated ordinance that repeals the emergency power ordinance and rules, make uncertain the fate of ongoing anti-graft activities initiated under the state of emergency, according to legal experts.A saving clause is a provision in a statute or contract which makes sure if any clause is determined to be unenforceable, the remainder of the statute or contract will remain intact and enforceable.The saving clauses in the new ordinance allow incomplete activities like investigations, inquiries, and trials, which were initiated under the now repealed emergency powers rules (EPR), to be completed under ordinary laws of ...
(read more) Wednesday, December 17th, 2008Awami League (AL) President Sheikh Hasina yesterday said she faced "foreign" pressure to sell country's natural gas to other countries during her rule between 1996 and 2001 but did not give in."I as the daughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman neither yielded to any pressure nor agreed to sell gas," said the former premier without naming the pressure group.Hasina was addressing several election rallies on her three-day tour to South including Tungipara, Gopalganj through which she started her election campaign outside Dhaka.She was accompanied by her younger sister Sheikh Rehana and Rehana's daughter Azmina Siddiqui Ruponti.Addressing a rally at Sreenagar ...
(read more) Wednesday, December 17th, 2008A band of key players, who made a botched attempt to abort the birth of Bangladesh, is none other than the top brass of Jamaat-e-Islami, young in 1971.They had joined forces with the Pakistani occupation army to commit what shaped up into a full-blown genocide in the nine-month bloody war.For Motiur Rahman Nizami, now chief of Jamaat and the then president of Islami Chhatra Shangha, it was a parallel struggle to protect every inch of Pakistan during the Liberation War.The head of the Islamic party said the activists of the student front had been pledge-bound to attack the mainland Hindustan ...
(read more) Wednesday, December 17th, 2008The government is set to approve the Detailed Area Plan (DAP) of Dhaka metropolitan city soon despite strong objections by experts and environmentalists due to its serious flaws that are likely to have terrible impact on urban life and environment.Sources in the Ministry of Housing and Public Works said the plan, which reclassified the city land use categories and designed Dhaka's flood flow areas as urban residential zones, might get approval on December 24.Experts alleged that the ministry and Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) are in a hurry to approve the plan which would bring fortune to land grabbers and real ...
(read more) Wednesday, December 17th, 2008Intense fighting in northern Sri Lanka yesterday left at least 25 government troops and 120 Tamil Tigers dead in the ongoing battle for the rebels' political capital, a military spokesman said.Security forces carried out simultaneous attacks against Tamil Tiger strong points near the town of Kilinochchi and also on the Jaffna peninsula, military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said.In a rare statement announcing casualty figures, he said that another 160 government soldiers and an estimated 250 rebels were wounded.The defence ministry decided in October not to reveal daily casualty figures, saying they would affect military operations.Nanayakkara said troops were consolidating positions they ...
(read more) Wednesday, December 17th, 2008On the occasion of the country's Victory Day yesterday, Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami repeatedly expressed his support for Pakistani leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah's two-nation theory basing on which Pakistan was created in 1947.Noted historians, educationists and intellectuals of the country termed Nizami's remark an "audacious" and "tendentiously wrong reading of history" because Bangladesh was not liberated based on the two-nation theory but Bangalee nationalism.They said making such remarks amounts to an act of sedition.The statement was a trick to get media coverage ahead of the parliamentary election, they said, observing that people could give its appropriate answer in the ...
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