BNP Standing Committee Member Salahuddin Ahmed has said it is ultimately up to the people to decide whether the next national election should be held under the Proportional Representation (PR) system, report agencies.
"BNP believes in resolving the matter through dialogue. If there is a demand for holding elections under the PR system, the decision should rest with the people. We believe the issue ought to be resolved at the negotiation table," he said.
The BNP leader made the remarks while speaking at a dialogue hosted by Tarunner Rashtrya Chinta at the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh (IDEB), in the capital on Saturday.
The BNP leader, however, criticized Jamaat-e-Islami's stance, calling their simultaneous calls for dialogue and protests contradictory.
"If Jamaat is confident about winning the election, they should participate. Why are they refraining from contesting and instead creating obstacles with various excuses? One cannot pursue both dialogue and protest simultaneously. It's self-contradictory," he said.
Salahuddin also expressed concern over student representatives joining the government.
"In democratic practice, it is unheard of for someone to be part of both the ruling party and the opposition. The day student representatives joined the government, I realised they could no longer contribute to true nation-building," he said. "It's not just about me asking them to step down, they themselves must feel the responsibility to do so."
Reaffirming BNP's commitment to democratic values, Salahuddin said, "There can be no coexistence of government and opposition within the same entity. No political party should impose its demands on the nation. We must uphold anti-fascist national unity and prevent creation of a political crisis."
Salahuddin says mass lawsuits, 'mob violence'
harmed interim government most
BNP's senior leader Salahuddin Ahmed has said the interim government has suffered the most damage from widespread cases and "mob violence", reports bdnews24.com.
He said on Saturday at a roundtable discussion organised by the English daily The Daily Star at Karwan Bazar in Dhaka.
"After the 5th of August, the cases filed in 2024 and the mob crises that followed -- these two things have damaged this government the most. They have damaged the people," the BNP Standing Committee member said.
He also criticised the practice of naming several thousand people in a single case, many of whom, he argued, had no link to the alleged incident.
"But who records these cases? Police," Salahuddin said. "Earlier, they couldn't even take a case from us. For example, when I was subjected to enforced disappearance, my wife couldn't even file a general diary."
