CA for building national consensus to rebuild country

Head of interim government Prof Yunus has sought cooperation from the media to foster national consensus on rebuilding Bangladesh in tune with spirit of the student-mass uprising.

"We got an opportunity to rebuild and reform the country after the student-led revolution. Let's explore it," the Chief Adviser was quoted as saying while exchanging views with the editors of top dailies in the country at the State Guesthouse Jamuna.

The head of interim government also assured the editors of ensuring full freedom of the media and of repealing all the black laws enacted earlier to curb the freedom of press, said Mahfuz Anam, Editor of the Daily Star, and Shafiqul Alam, Press Secretary to the CA, in separate press briefings.

"We have expressed our total solidarity with the activities of the government of Dr Yunus," Mr Anam told the reporters after the meet.

The CA told the editors that he has no plan of his own about the tenure of the government and he wants to fix it on the basis of the aspirations of the people.

He also wants to assess public opinion about their stay through the media.

There was a divergence of opinions about this among the editors, with some having suggested that it should be 2 or 3 years, some preferring it to be set in accordance with the tasks the interim government wanted to accomplish..

"'We said that the government should fix its agenda first and then the tenure can be determined based on those agenda"', said Mr Anam.

"We have also urged the CA to stop filing cases against journalists indiscriminately. If any journalist is involved in corruption, he or she can be sued," Mr Anam said, adding that the CA told them that it was not the policy of the government to harass journalists.

The editors proposed the formation of an independent media commission to ensure freedom of the press and to repeal the black laws like the cyber-security act.

The CA urged the editors to write freely about the wrongdoings of the government so that corrective measures can be taken.

The editors also raised the issue of reform of the constitution, ACC, banking sector, local government, police, and autonomous bodies.

One of the editors prescribed the rewriting of the Bank Company Act, saying that it was amended several times in the past to pave the way for the bank owners to "plunder public money".

He also suggested abolishing the Financial Institutions Division, which, as a controlling body of the state-owned financial institutions, provided undue facilities to some "vested quarters".

Some of the editors suggested the formation of committees to conduct meaningful reform in different sectors.

The formation of constituent assembly was also suggested for rewriting the constitution, Mr Shafiq told the briefing. The issue of reforming the Election Commission was also discussed and the editors said that the EC should be formed in such a manner so that it can enjoy true freedom to hold free, fair and credible elections.

The editors thanked the CA for his initiative to get the 57 convicted Bangladeshi workers in the UAE exonerated.

"It was possible because of a leader like Dr Yunus, who talked to the head of UAE government personally to pardon the Bangladeshi workers" Mr Anam said.

Meanwhile, the Editors' Council in a statement later in the day said its attention has been drawn to the possible tenure of the present interim government as said by the Press Secretary to the Chief Adviser while briefing the media after the view-exchange meeting with editors.

Chief Adviser's press secretary, Shafiqul Alam, said most of the editors opined that the tenure of the interim government should be minimum two years or a little less than two years, according to the statement.

But most of them did not want to talk about the logical time, the Press Secretary said, adding that they observed that the agenda or the tasks of the government would actually determine how long they would stay, it mentioned.

However, the Editors Council in its statement said since most of the editors who attended the meeting are members of the Editor Council, some of the editors made their observation regarding the tenure of the government as a matter of personal opinion.

The statement says: "Most of the editors present at the view-exchange meeting did not say anything about the tenure of the government."

They gave more emphasis on speedy improvement in law-and-order situation, safety of people and factories and speedy presentation of the agenda or outline of this government to the people, it added.

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