Khaleda urges people to protect voting right [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

Khaleda urges people to protect voting right

Local December 29, 2015

Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia on Monday urged people to resist in a peaceful and united manner the ruling party’s plan of spreading ‘evil-influence’ in municipal polls slated for Wednesday.
She urged people to go to polling centres in large groups to protect their voting right and cast vote for the BNP candidates.
Khaleda made the call at a crowded news conference at her Gulshan office in the capital.
Reading out her written statement, she criticised the incumbent Election Commission’s various steps and alleged it was clear that all arrangements were accomplished to turn the upcoming poll into a farce.
Khaleda said her party would remain firm in the battle of election to the last.
She reiterated her call for deployment of army in the polls.
She alleged that there were numerous incidents of attack on offices of opposition candidates, killing of their supporters, obstructing electioneering and intimidation of voters and polling agents.
Apart from terrorists, she said, members of a section of law enforcers were being used in these misdeeds.
She said the ruling party’s goons were making a public show of firearms in many areas and threatening to grab polling centres but no action was taken against them.
She said a leader of ‘so-called’ opposition and special envoy of the prime minister said voting would finish by 9:00am on the election day while a minister remarked that defeat of BNP was certain even before election.
Referring to the last general election of January 5, 2014, she said the incumbent was in a ‘crisis of moral legitimacy’.
Khaleda said fresh inclusive parliament election under a neutral and non-party system was necessary to overcome the crisis.
She said the government arranged the municipal polls with a futile hope to overcome the crisis and show the world that they still had popularity through manipulating the election results.
Khaleda urged journalists to play a courageous role in the polls to project the true picture.
She said BNP wanted to give an electioneering advertisement in the media but the electronic media did not agree to do so under indirect pressure of the government.
She mentioned recent incidents of attacks on foreigners and religious gatherings and places.
Khaleda said people were in fear whether the nearly extinct militancy in Bangladesh was staging a comeback with fresh vigour and had established link with international terrorism.
She did not entertain any question at the programme, where other leaders of BNP and its allies were present.