BNP pushes for hartal
Staff Correspondent
BNP leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir yesterday urged his party activists to make tomorrow's countrywide hartal a success.
While inaugurating a mourning procession organised to mark the death anniversary of late president Ziaur Rahman, the BNP acting secretary general said, "The government is hatching a conspiracy against the caretaker government system. We will wage a tougher movement across the country soon to realise our demand for a midterm election under a neutral and non-partisan caretaker government."
With banners and portraits of Ziaur Rahman, several thousand leaders, workers and supporters of BNP and its front and associate bodies marched from the party's Naya Paltal office to the National Press Club. They also chanted slogans in support of Sunday's hartal.
Earlier, after a meeting of BNP's divisional and Dhaka city unit leaders at the chairperson's Gulshan office, Mirza Alamgir said they were compelled to announce the hartal as "the government is going to snatch people's right to vote."
He urged the authorities to refrain from repression on opposition men centring the hartal.
BNP and its key ally Jamaat-e-Islami called a countrywide hartal for Sunday in protest at what they claimed was the government's plan to cancel the caretaker government system. A few others like-minded parties have already lent support for the hartal.
The Supreme Court recently in a verdict declared the caretaker system illegal. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said the system should not continue since the apex court declared it unconstitutional.
The prime minister on Thursday said BNP called the hartal against the court verdict.
Meanwhile, at a discussion at the National Press Club, BNP's standing committee member Moudud Ahmed said they called the hartal not against the court but the government's decision to repeal the caretaker government provision.
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