Joy rules out opposition's claim over state of democracy

FE Team | Published: October 01, 2018 00:07:19

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's ICT affairs adviser and son Sajeeb Wazed has ruled out the opposition's claims about the state of democracy and fears over the upcoming polls, saying none of those were true, reports BSS.
"They (opposition) are wrong. None of these claims are true," he wrote in a signed article in US-based political news and polling data aggregator Real Clear Politics that carried the article on its Sunday issue.
Joy said the government opponents claimed that democracy in Bangladesh was broken, "call the 2014 general elections invalid and say the upcoming elections will be, too".
The opponents, he said, alleged that the disappearance of some opposition leaders was a government conspiracy.
"They are wrong. None of these claims are true," the article read. The truth is, Joy said, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party or BNP chose to boycott the last election and thereafter "complained that too few political parties participated, resulting in a sham (and) this was a cynical ploy".
"Blame for the imperfect 2014 election rested entirely with the BNP, not the governing Awami League party. The BNP didn't put up a single candidate for parliament to add controversy to the elections," the article read.
BNP, he said, actually "failed Bangladesh in 2014".
Joy recalled that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina repeatedly said that free and fair elections are the cornerstone of democracy and even asked the BNP to help oversee the elections while the party rejected her concessions and walked away and instead, several of its leaders chose to firebomb polling places.
BNP leaders, he said, along with members of the allied and often belligerent Jamaat-e-Islami, sparked violent protests that suppressed the vote and tore at the soul of the nation in 2014.
Joy said BNP and their collaborators set fire to thousands of homes, cars, buildings and businesses, demolished power stations, murdered 20 law enforcement officers and torched government buildings and on the election day they terrorized their political opponents with Molotov cocktails.
"Worse, the BNP appears poised to turn its back on the elections again this year. It has again threatened to stir civil unrest and violence," Joy said.
The premier's adviser referred to a report of US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) which interviewed someone who said "the attackers were our neighbours from the other side of the village. They are all BNP-Jamaat".
"They asked us not to vote. Between 9 and 11 a.m., they actually blocked the road so no one could go to the polling center. Then at 11 they began the attack," he quoted the person as telling the HRW.
Joy said several BNP leaders were charged for their roles in the violence while as a result of their actions "the party's (BNP) popularity dwindled to all-time lows".
But he said as BNP-linked agitators fled prosecution, the party alleged that they had been the victims of "enforced disappearances".
"Bangladesh police have investigated every instance of a reported disappearance," Joy said.
Police, he said, they found no evidence of government involvement and "what they have found is that some of the 'disappeared' went into hiding to evade prosecution for violent crimes".
Joy referred to the Salahuddin Ahmed's case who was reportedly abducted by police in 2015 but "he was found two months later, hiding in India where the police quickly concluded that he concocted the entire episode in an attempt to evade justice in Bangladesh".
"Others reappeared quickly," Joy said, citing the instance of BNP-linked intellectual Farhad Mazhar who "was found just hours after he was reported missing on a bus travelling from the southwestern city of Khulna to the capital, Dhaka".